4/28/97 Contact: Joyce Barlow Dodd, 614/593-4181

ATHENS, Ohio -- Two Pulitzer Prize-winning poets are among the five internationally known writers scheduled to participate in Ohio University's 12th annual Spring Literary Festival May 7-9 on the Athens campus.

The lineup includes poets Galway Kinnell and Jorie Graham, essayist Barry Lopez, and fiction writers Mary Lee Settle and Russell Banks. The visiting writers will read from their work and present a formal lecture or talk (see attached schedule). All events take place in 194 Irvine Auditorium on the campus' West Green. The event, sponsored by the university's Creative Writing Program in the Department of English, is free and open to the public.

Every one of these writers is an all-star, and there is a wonderful blend of diversity among them," said festival Coordinator Joyce Barlow Dodd. At the same time, each one is bringing a high level of intensity to this event. This festival celebrates the importance of our art in our lives and reminds us that writing and reading are extraordinarily powerful and essential human activities."

Kinnell won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for his Selected Poems and also has won the American Book Award, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in 1927 in Providence, R.I., Kinnell is the author of more than 20 celebrated books of poetry, prose and translations. A former MacArthur Fellow, he teaches at New York University.

Graham won a 1996 Pulitzer for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994. She also is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius" Fellowship and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The author of six volumes of poetry, Graham has been called one of the finest poets writing today" by Pulitzer Prize-winner John Ashbery. Graham lives in Iowa City, where she is a member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

Lopez, a celebrated nonfiction writer, is the author of Arctic Dreams, winner of the National Book Award, and Of Wolves and Men, for which he received the John Burroughs Medal. The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee has called him the best nature writer of our decade, repeatedly reminding us of the ages-old ties between the wild places and humanity." He is the author of six books of fiction and a collection of essays. His other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Institute of Arts and Letters.

Settle, a National Book Award winner and native of Charleston, W.Va., joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force of the Royal Air Force in 1942 and lived for the next 14 years in England. Her memoir, All the Brave Promises, is about her wartime experiences. She will open the festival at 7:30 p.m. May 7 with readings from her new memoir, Addie. She is the author of numerous other books, including Blood Tie, which won the National Book Award in 1978.

Banks is the author of 12 books of fiction and has won numerous prizes and awards for his writing, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and the American Book Award. Banks, who was raised in New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts, says he tends to write stories of working-class people living their lives one step up from the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder."

For more information on the Spring Literary Festival, call 614-593-4181.