BYRDS & BEAUTY IS A VERB @ ARCADIA UNIVERSITY MARCH 23RD

Friday, March 23rd, Lee Merrill Byrd and Bobby Byrd will be on campus reading at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania (near Philly). In the afternoon they will be reading from their work and work-shopping about publishing (they are co-publishers of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso); and in the evening they will host a celebration of the new poetry anthology BEAUTY IS A VERB: THE NEW POETRY OF DISABILITY edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black and Michael Northern. Lee is an alumni of Arcadia in its previous incarnation as Beaver College (an all-girls institution whose name was changed to protect the...oh, no time for jokes!).

BEAUTY IS A VERB CELEBRATION & READING: 7:30PM in the Mirror Room of the Grey Tower Castle. Anne Kaier (a professor at Arcadia), Hal Sirowitz, and Dan Simpson--all contributors of BEAUTY--and Michael Northern, one of the three editors, will read from their work. The Byrds will introduce the anthology and the readers, and Northern will emcee the reading. Ron Silliman--widely-known poet, critic and blogger living in Philadelphia--has said "[BEAUTY IS A VERB] is going to be one of the defining collections of the 21st century...the discourse between ability, identity & poetry will never be the same." [For Ron's complete review of BEAUTY, go here.]

READING AND PUBLISHING WORKSHOP: 2PM Friday afternoon and also in the Mirror Room of the Grey Tower Castle, will feature Lee and Bobby Byrd first reading their own work (Lee is a novelist, Bobby a poet) and then conducting a workshop about publishing and discussing their own experiences as independent publishers at Cinco Puntos Press.

For further information, please contact Prof. Richard Wertime of Arcadia's English Department at wertime@arcadia.edu.