Poet, novelist Naomi Shihab Nye to speak on reading, writing

Poet and novelist Naomi Shihab Nye will deliver the sixth annual Charlotte Zolotow Lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in the Wisconsin Union Theater at UW–Madison. The free, public Cooperative Children’s Book Center lecture is entitled “Just One Gazelle Would Be Fine with Me: Reading and Writing in Our Current World.”

A poet acclaimed for her works that celebrate the human spirit as it is revealed in the details of everyday life, Nye is the author of highly regarded books of poetry for adults, as well as children and teenagers. Nye’s poetry reflects her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in many parts of the world, including Asia and the Middle East.

Many of her works for youth focus on bringing international voices and perspectives to young people in the United States, as she does in anthologies such as “This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World” (Four Winds Press, 2002) and “The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East” (Simon & Schuster, 1998).

Her children’s novel, “Habibi” (Simon & Schuster, 1997), is about a Palestinian-American girl who moves to Jerusalem as a teenager, an experience based on Nye’s own young adulthood. Her most recent book for teens is “19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East” (Greenwillow, 2002).

Nye is a Lannan fellow, she was a Guggenheim fellow, and she has been a Wittner Bynner fellow with the Library of Congress. She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, four Pushcart Prizes, and numerous awards and citations for her children’s literature including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. She is a regular columnist for “Organica” and poetry editor for “The Texas Observer.”

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center is a library of the School of Education at UW–Madison. For information, contact Kathleen T. Horning, Cooperative Children’s Book Center, (608) 263-3721, horning@education.wisc.edu, or see http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/czfaq.htm