The A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series presents authors Marc Harshman and Mary Barbara Moore at 7:30 p.m. April 16, in the Shawkey Dining Room of the Memorial Student Center. It is free and open to all.

Harshman was appointed in 2012 as the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia. He is, besides being a poet, the author of fourteen nationally acclaimed children’s books including FALLINGWATER: THE BUILDING OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S MASTERPIECE, co-authored with Anna Smucker and subsequently named an Amazon Book of the Month. Previous titles have included THE STORM, a Smithsonian Notable Book. His collections of poetry include WOMAN IN RED ANORAK, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize from Lynx House/University of Washington and BELIEVE WHAT YOU CAN, winner of the Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association [WVU Press]. He was recently named by Shepherd University as the Appalachian Heritage Writer for 2024 whose past honorees have included Barbara Kingsolver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Henry Louis Gates, and Nikki Giovanni. He is co-winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale University Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. His fifth full-length collection of poems, DISPATCH FROM THE MOUNTAIN STATE has just been published by West Virginia University Press. For many years he taught fifth and sixth grades in a three-room school in rural Marshall County, West Virginia.

 Moore’s newest poetry collection Amanda Chimera, won Madville Publishing’s Arthur Smith prize and came out in January, 2025. Prior poetry books include Dear If, Orison Books 2022, a contest finalist; Flicker, Dogfish Head Prize, 2016; The Book Of Snow, Cleveland State U Poetry Center, 1997; and prize-winning chapbooks Amanda and the Man Soul and Eating the Light. Poems appeared lately in New Letters, Catamaran, POETRY, I-70 Review, South Dakota Review, Birmingham Poetry Review (BPR), NELLE, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner. She has placed in or won contests at BPR, NELLE, Terrain and Nimrod. A professor who taught at Marshall University, she’s retired now.

Presented by Marshall University with support from the Department of English.

Free and open to the public.