Chairman of National Endowment for the Arts to Speak April 12

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statue of jesse mercer sitting on a bench

WHO: Poet Dana Gioia, Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and 2002 American Book Award winner.

WHAT: Gioia visits Mercer University to address the meeting of the Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature. Individuals interested in attending the conference should contact John Dunaway at (478) 301-2987. Gioia will also present a lecture titled “Do the Arts Matter?” sponsored by the Macon Arts Alliance. This lecture is free and open to all faculty, students and staff of Mercer University and to the general public.

WHEN/WHERE: Conference, 9 a.m., Speech, 10:30 a.m., Saturday, April 12, Religious Life Center.

“Do the Arts Matter?” 2 p.m., Saturday, April 12, School of Medicine Auditorium.WHY: Gioia was recently named Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and won the 2002 American Book Award for his latest volume of poetry, Interrogations at Noon. His poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Slate and Hudson Review. He is also a long time literary commentator on American culture and literature for BBC radio. Gioia earned his B.A. and M.B.A degrees from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, where he studied with poets Robert Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Bishop.

Media interested in covering the lectures should contact Sonal Patel at (678) 547-6431.