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TONIGHT: Ashe County’s On the Same Page Literary Festival Will Feature the Poet Laureate of the United States, Tracy K. Smith at 7:30 p.m.

She will appear at the Ashe County Civic Center on Monday, April 1, at a 7:30 p.m. event.

Tracy K. Smith

Smith will read her poetry and answer the community’s questions at the open-to-the-public event in West Jefferson.  “We will feature Tracy K. Smith’s to help celebrate Poetry Month this April,” said Ashe County Arts Council Executive Director, Jane Lonon. “When she was originally selected as Poet Laureate of the U.S., Smith stated one of her goals was to reach rural areas, places where you don’t usually find Poet Laureates…we immediately contacted her,” Lonon explained, “On the Same Page and Ashe County are a perfect fit.” (Originally scheduled for the September, 2018 Festival, Smith was unable to come due to the hurricane.)

The event will be free and open to the public. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for children and adults in our community to really engage with an internationally-recognized poet and teacher,” said Lonon, “It brings poetry out of the clouds and down to earth.”

In 2017, Tracy K. Smith was appointed the 22nd United States Poet Laureate. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015) which was the Festival Read in 2018, and four books of poetry. Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award. The Body’s Question was the winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. In 2014 the Academy of American Poets awarded Smith with the Academy Fellowship, awarded to one poet each year to recognize distinguished poetic achievement. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Her latest collection of poems, Wade in the Water, was released in 2018. (Graywolf Press).