Quinebaug Valley Community College will hold its 15th Annual Julius Sokenu Poetry Prize Celebration at 6:00 pm on Thursday, April 28th in the Robert E. Miller Auditorium at 742 Upper Maple Street, Danielson, CT. The event will also be live-streamed on QVCC’s YouTube channel. The event will feature a reading by award-winning student poets and honored guest Bruce Cohen.
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Bruce Cohen’s poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in over a hundred literary periodicals such as AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Harvard Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review, and has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He has published four volumes of poetry: Disloyal Yo-Yo (Dream Horse Press), which was awarded the 2007 Orphic Poetry Prize, SWERVE (Black Lawrence Press), Placebo Junkies Conspiring with The Half-Asleep (Black Lawrence Press) and Imminent Disappearances, Impossible Numbers & Panoramic X-Rays (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2016). Prior to joining the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Connecticut in 2012, he directed, developed, and implemented nationally recognized academic enhancement programs at the University of Arizona, The University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Connecticut.
The Julius Sokenu Poetry Awards is a lively annual event honoring the best student poetry in English and Spanish at Quinebaug Valley Community College and at Quinebaug Middle College. The event is sponsored by the QVCC Foundation, Department of English, Department of Spanish, Department of History and Social Sciences, the Cultural Programming Committee, QVCC Library, EASTCONN’s Quinebaug Middle College, and the QVCC Student Government Association, as well as generous Julius Sokenu Poetry Prize donors. The event is free and open to the public. Sandwiches, chips, sweets, and cool beverages will be provided.
For more information, please contact Professor of English, Jon Andersen at jandersen@qvcc.edu or Interim Academic Division Director, Elkin Espitia-Loaiza, at eespitia-loaiza@qvcc.commnet.edu.