ISRAELI POET LINDA ZISQUIT TO GIVE TALK/WORKSHOP AT PITT

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 11 -- Israeli poet Linda Zisquit will give a workshop and a reading of her work on Thursday, Jan. 21. The talk/workshop will take place at 4 p.m. in 501 Cathedral of Learning and the reading will be at 8:15 p.m. in the Kurtzman Room of the William Pitt Union, Oakland. Zisquit's visit is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.

A native of Buffalo, New York, Zisquit has published two collections of poetry: "Unopened Letters" (The Sheep Meadow Press, 1996) and "Ritual Bath" (Broken Moon Press, 1993). She received an NEA Translation Grant to translate a collection of Yona Wallach's poetry, "Wild Light," which received a PEN Translation Award nomination. Zisquit teaches writing at Hebrew University and for Wesleyan and Brown University's study abroad program in Israel.

In the forward to "Ritual Bath," poet Rita Dove says, "As a born-and-bred American who chose to emigrate to Israel, Linda Zisquit stands at the crossroads to several worlds -- European and Arab, American individualism and tribal law, the Jewish Diaspora and Palestine, Talmudic doctrine and capitalistic enterprise . . . . What has emerged under the pressure of [Zisquit's] unflinching gaze is a stark and astonishingly beautiful poetry."

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