Gwen Frostic Reading Series
The Gwen Frostic Reading Series has returned, and the first event will feature two English alumni who are also state poet laureates: Traci Brimhall and Melba Joyce Boyd.
Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University. She is the author of five poetry collections, including "Love Prodigal" (Copper Canyon, 2024). Her poems have appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, The Nation, Orion, the New York times Magazine, Best American Poetry, and more. She's received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library's Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She's currently the poet-in-residence at the Guggenheim Museum and Poet Laureate for the State of Kansas.
Melba Joyce Boyd is the third Poet Laureate of the State of Michigan and the 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist. She is the award-winning writer of nine books of poetry; the biographies of two major African American writers, Dudley Randall and Frances E. W. Harper; editor of Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall; and co-editor with M.L. Liebler of Abandon Automobile: Detroit Poetry 2001. She has over 100 published essays and directed two documentary films about Detroit poets, Dudley Randall and Naomi Long Madgett. She was a distinguished professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University, and adjunct professor at the University of Michigan.