Vievee Francis and Matthew Olzmann In Conversation with Michael Dumanis

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Join Michael Dumanis in a Q&A with visiting poets Vievee Francis and Matthew Olzmann.

Vievee Francis is the author of four books of poetry including The Shared World (Northwestern University Press, 2023), winner of the Vermont Book Award; and Forest Primeval (Northwestern University Press, 2015), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. She co-wrote the libretto for the transdisciplinary opera The Ritual of Breath. Forthcoming are her fifth volume of poetry, Cleaning the Houses of the Dead, and a memoir, Ugly, an account of family and racial/cultural standards of beauty and their implications for black women's body image. Her work has been honored with a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and a Rona Jaffe Award. Born in West Texas and raised in the Detroit area, she lives in Vermont and is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route (Alice James, 2022), which uses the form of the letter to explore issues related to contemporary American society, as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology and has been recognized with fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Born and raised in the Detroit area, he lives in Vermont, is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College