Poet Victoria Chang will read from her latest collection of work on Thursday, Oct. 2, as part of Park University's Ethnic Voices Poetry Series.
The presentation, "The Business of Words," hosted by the Kansas City Public Library, is set for 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., in Kansas City. Admission is free.
Chang's latest collection is titled Salvinia Molesta, which along with her other books, will be sold at the event by Rainy Day Books. Chang will be on hand to sign copies.
Her first book of poetry won the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award as well as the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic and Ploughshares. She also edited Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, published by the University of Illinois Press.
After earning a graduate degree in Asian studies at Harvard University, Chang obtained a master's in business administration from Stanford University and worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, a management consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, and joined an Internet start-up casualty of the dot-com crash. She currently works as a business writer.
Chang will kick off Park University's 2008-2009 Ethnic Voices Poetry Series, which is funded in part by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.
"The poets in this second year of the series expose audiences to ideas and points of view with which we may not be familiar, presented through one of the most beautiful of the art forms," said Virginia Brackett, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and director of the Honors Program at Park University. "Such exposure is truly necessary with the increase in cultural connections within our country and our own communities."
For more information on the series, which will include several more poets this year, visit www.park.edu/ethnicpoetry, or contact Brackett at virginia.brackett@park.edu or (816) 584-6818.
To RSVP for the reading, call (816) 701.3407 or visit the library at https://www.kclibrary.org/rsvp/2309. Free parking is available in the Library District Parking Garage at 10th and Baltimore.
