The Creative Writing Program at Cornell has invited a diverse roster of 10 notable poets and fiction writers to campus for its Spring 2007 Reading Series.

Alexander

The series begins Feb. 8 with a reading by poet Elizabeth Alexander at 7:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. The reading is free and open to the public.

Alexander is a professor of African-American studies at Yale University and uses African-American vernacular, history and popular culture in her essays, drama and poetry, including her poem "American Sublime," which was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Her subjects have ranged from slave narratives to Duke Ellington and Ornette Coleman.

"Her work is very well crafted and finely made," said Alice Fulton, the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English. "She's got a wonderful sense of the music of poetry and the craft of poetry. In addition, she has a real political consciousness and an edginess. I really admire her work. She's got courage, she's funny, and I love her attitude as well as her sense of line and technique."

The weekly reading series features both established and emerging writers, diverse in class, gender, ethnicity and race as well as in writing styles, drawn from a wish list of talent recommended by creative writing faculty members.

"Aesthetics are very important -- we wanted different types of writing to be here," Fulton said.

Many of the writers will be in residency with MFA students in creative writing and will present public talks on their craft.

The series also includes:

• Feb. 15: Willie Perdomo, an award-winning poet featured in the PBS documentary "The United States of Poetry" and HBO's "Def Poetry Jam."
• Feb. 22: Junot Diaz, MFA '95. Diaz's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, the Pushcart Prize XXII anthology and four volumes of Best American Short Stories.
• March 1: Yvette Christiansë, a fiction writer and poet whose academic interests include the post-apartheid era in her native South Africa. Her visit is co-sponsored by the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies program and the Africana Studies and Research Center.
• March 8: George Saunders. The author of two acclaimed short-story collections and a best-selling children's book, Saunders is a Guggenheim and MacArthur fellow and teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.
• March 15: David Barber, poetry editor of the Atlantic Monthly and a widely published poet.
• March 29: Sandra Gilbert, a poet, feminist literary critic, and the M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell.
• April 5: Emily Rosko, MFA '05. "Her first volume won the Iowa Poetry Prize. She's very gifted and we're delighted to have her back," Fulton said.
• April 12: Alice Friman, an award-winning poet and current poet-in-residence at Georgia College and Georgia State University.
• April 19: Heather McHugh, editor of "Best American Poems 2007," will give the Robert Chasen Memorial Poetry Reading. McHugh was named one of the first U.S. Artists' Fellows in 2006 and has been a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize nominee.

Readings will be given in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium and 258 Goldwin Smith Hall. See http://www.arts.cornell.edu/english/sp07-readings.html for more details and updates.