Award-Winning Poet Sandra Beasley to highlight Bergan Festival This Weekend!

Beasley, who gave a reading at Foxcroft’s festival in 2008, has been honored for each of her published collections of poetry. She won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her first collection, Theories of Falling, and the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize for her second, I Was the Jukebox. Her latest collection, Count the Waves (W. W. Norton, 2015), has just come out but it includes a number of poems from the chapbook that earned her the 2013 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook prize.

Beasley’s poetry has appeared in such magazines as Ploughshares, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry and The Believer, as well as The Best American Poetry 2010. Her nonfiction has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post Magazine, Oxford American and the Wall Street Journal. Her memoir, Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life, was published in 2011.

Beasley, who lives in Washington, DC, holds an MFA in creative writing from The American University, and a BA in English from the University of Virginia. 

During her visit, Beasley will give a reading at the Audrey B. Currier Library Saturday morning, conduct a writing workshop and serve as judge for the School’s annual poetry reading competition. The festival begins Friday evening with the popular Poetry Slam, featuring original pieces performed by students and judged by their peers. The festival also non-competitive readings original and published poetry, in English and in other languages -- ranging from French and German to Mandarin and Catalan -- throughout the weekend.

Named in honor of former English teacher Paul Bergan, the annual poetry festival has brought a variety of established poets to campus over the years including the late Claudia Emerson (Virginia Poet Laureate), alumna Tina Barr '73, Maggie Blake Bailey, Donna E.M. Denizé, Joel Dias Porter (aka DJ Renegade), Geraldine Connolly, Sami Miranda, and performance poets Jason LeVasseur, Nan Fry and Clint Smith.