Poet

Deborah Keenan

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Talk on craft
3:00 P.M.—CSU Ostrander Auditorium
Reading
7:30 P.M.—CSU Room 253

Deborah Keenan is the author of six collections of poetry, including Happiness, Good Heart, and Kingdoms. She is also the co-editor, with Roseann Lloyd, of Looking for Home: Women Writing About Exile, which won an American Book Award in 1991. Susan Ludvigson compares the poetry of Deborah Keenan to that of Emily Dickinson, drawing on Keenan’s images “startled from a dream that disorient and challenge our perceptions even as they delight us with their inventions.” Recognized as “ambitious” by the Village Voice, “a poet of considerable talent” by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, and a poet who “rarely strikes a false note” by the New York Times Book Review, Keenan has also received two Bush Foundation Fellowships for her poetry, an NEA Fellowship, and the Loft-McKnight poet of distinction award. A poem from Kingdoms received the Pushcart Prize in 2007. In both 1994, 2000, and 2004 she was named professor of the year for teaching and service in the M.F.A. program at Hamline University. She has four children, and continues to be a professor and faculty advisor in the Graduate Liberal Studies School at Hamline University. She lives with her husband in St. Paul.

See a writing sample by Keenan.

Listen to the interview, craft talk, or reading with Keenan.

To learn more about Keenan, see this website.

If you attended any component of this residency, please offer your comments.

This year's Good Thunder Reading Series is funded by the Minnesota State University Department of English, the College of Arts and Humanities, the Office of Institutional Diversity, the Eddice B. Barber Visiting Writer Endowment, the Robert C. Wright Endowment, and individual donors. This activity is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council from funds appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature and the McKnight Foundation. This activity is also made possible in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. MSU Library Services and Barnes & Noble Bookstore at Minnesota State offer additional support.