KINGSTON, R.I. –February 25, 2009—The University of Rhode Island English Department announces upcoming readings in its READ/WRITE series. All events are free, open to the public, and followed by a reception. Here are the details:

March 5: Jan Clausen & Jan Lazarre, 4 to 6 p.m.

Lippitt Hall Auditorium, 5 Lippitt Road, URI Kingston Campus

Feminist activist Jan Clausen’s 11 books include two novels, a memoir Apples and Oranges, and five volumes of poetry. Her two most recent poetry titles, From a Glass House (IKON) and If You Like Difficulty (Harbor Mountain Press), came out in 2007. She teaches creative writing at the New School and in the Goddard College Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program.

Jane Lazarre is the author of the acclaimed feminist classic, The Mother Knot, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons, and Wet Earth and Dreams, a Narrative of Grief and Recovery, all published by Duke University Press, and the novels, The Powers of Charlotte (Crossing) and Worlds Beyond My Control (Dutton). She will read from her new novel, Some Place Quite Unknown, just out from Hamilton Stone editions.

The event is co-sponsored by URI’s Women’s Studies Program.

March 26: D.A. Powell, 4 to 6 p.m.

Hoffmann Room, Swan Hall, 60 Upper College Road, URI Kingston Campus.

D. A. Powell is the author of Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. He teaches at the University of San Francisco and lives in the Bay Area. He will be reading from his recently released fourth collection, Chronic, which received a Publishers Weekly, Starred Review that states it “is simultaneously an accessible heartbreaker, a rare gem for connoisseurs, a genre-altering breakthrough and a long anticipated follow-up.”

The reading is underwritten, in part, by the Citizens Bank Foundation.