PITT'S PITTSBURGH CONTEMPORARY WRITERS SERIES TO WELCOME POET MARK DOTY

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 4 -- Mark Doty, author of five books of poetry, kicks off the new year and the second half of the University of Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series with a reading on Thursday, Jan. 14, at 8:15 p.m. in David Lawrence Hall, Room 120.

Doty's books include "My Alexandria" which was chosen for the National Poetry Series by Philip Levine and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Britain's T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and "Atlantis" which was named a Notable Book of the Year by both the New York Times and the American Library Association, and received the Bingham Poetry Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. In 1998, HarperFlamingo published his latest collection, "Sweet Machine."

His memoir, "Heaven's Coast" won the PEN Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction, and was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, which described the book as "a terrifying and elegant document of the age of AIDS." The Washington Post said, "If one book survives the AIDS epidemic, it will be this one."

Doty's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Nation and other magazines. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting, Ingram Merrill and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.

He has taught at Brandeis, Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, and the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, and currently teaches in the graduate program at the University of Houston.

Other writers scheduled to appear at Pitt's Contemporary Writers Series in March are Barry Lopez and Tess Gallagher. Gay Talese, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Marita Golden were featured in the first half of this year's series.

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