Joe Wilkins, associate professor of English at Linfield College, will present “Language, Memory and Story: Writing Across the Genres” on Wednesday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. in the Fred Meyer Lounge in Riley Hall at Linfield.
“We carry deep in our bones the impulse to fit language to the world,” said Wilkins. “Song and story were our first arts.”
However, song and story differ, and the way the singer or the storyteller wields words makes all the difference. In this hybrid lecture/reading, Wilkins seeks to trace his own impulses and considerations as a cross-genre writer in fitting language—whether poem, essay or story—to the world.
Wilkins is the author of a memoir, “The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing Up on the Big Dry,” winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the 2013 Orion Book Award, and three collections of poems: “When We Were Birds,” winner of the Oregon Book Award, “Notes from the Journey Westward,” winner of the 2013 High Plains Book Award, and “Killing the Murnion Dogs,” a finalist for the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize. A National Magazine Award finalist and Pushcart Prize winner, Wilkins’s poems, essays and stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Utne Reader, Ecotone, The Sun, Orion and Slate, among other magazines and literary journals.
The lecture is free and open to the public. The Linfield College faculty lecture series offers one presentation each month. For more information, call 503-883-2409.
