Husband and wife poets William Pitt Root and Pamela Uschuk will be the featured authors at the next Writers in the Library. Uschuk is the Hodges Visiting Writer in the UT English department this semester. Root is a distinguished poet with a long literary career.

The poets will read from their works on Monday, February 7th, at 7 p.m., in the John C. Hodges Library auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Pamela Uschuk is the author of numerous books and chapbooks of poetry, and her work has appeared in over three hundred journals and anthologies worldwide. Uschuk’s latest book of poems, Crazy Love, won a 2010 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Also in 2010, two individual poems were recognized with prizes: the New Millennium Poetry Award for “Shostakovich: Five Pieces” and a Best of the Web award for “A Short History of Falling.” Other literary awards she has received include the Struga International Theme Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Daniels Writing Award from the National League of American PEN Women, and the 2001 Literature Award from the Tucson/Pima Arts Council. Uschuk teaches creative writing at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and is the director of the Southwest Writers Institute.

William Pitt Root’s collections of poetry include White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West, The Storm and Other Poems, and Trace Elements from a Recurring Kingdom. His work also has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Recognition of Root’s work includes three Pushcart Prizes, the Stanley Kunitz Poetry Award, the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships, and repeated Pulitzer nominations. He had the unique distinction of being the first Poet Laureate of Tucson, Arizona. His poems have been published widely in such places as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Poetry.

Root has been a Poet-in-the-Schools and visiting writer at schools and universities from coast to coast, as well as teaching writing to students on Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Tohono O’odham, Navajo, Hopi, and Wind River reservations.

The work of both poets has been translated into multiple languages, and they have performed and taught at writers’ workshops around the world. The couple live in southwestern Colorado outside of Durango, where they enjoy the outdoors and their beloved animal companions.