Squaw Valley Hosts an Extraordinary Evening of Poetry

The 43rd annual Squaw Valley Community of Writers will convene again this summer with acclaimed workshops in Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction and Screenwriting. As part of the workshop, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers will be hosting an extraordinary evening of poetry readings on Thursday, June 28, at 8 p.m. in The Olympic Village Lodge at Squaw Valley.

As part of the evening of poetry, Kazim Ali, Robert Hass, Sharon Olds, Claudia Rankine and C.D. Wright will read from their published and unpublished work, including poems written in Squaw Valley just days before.

Suggested donation for the evening is $15 or $10 for students. Please call or email Brett Hall Jones to reserve your seat at (530) 581-5200 or brett@squawvalleywriters.org.

Literature lovers may also be interested in events presented by the Community of Writers in conjunction with their Writers Workshops in Fiction and NonFiction. Many of the events such as readings, panels and discussions on the craft and the business of writing are open to the public and free of charge. Visit the Community of Writers website to download a public events schedule.

Poet Biographies:

KAZIM ALI is a poet, essayist, fiction writer and translator. His books include several volumes of poetry, including The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award, The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions), and the cross-genre text Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan University Press). Last year, Omnidawn Press published a translation of Water's Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri. His novels include Quinn's Passage (blazeVox books), named one of "The Best Books of 2005" by Chronogram magazine and The Disappearance of Seth (Etruscan Press), and his books of essays include Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence (University of Michigan Press), and last year’s Fasting for Ramadan (Tupelo Press). In addition to co-editing Jean Valentine: This-World Company from the Under Discussion series of the University of Michigan Press, he is a contributing editor for AWP Writers Chronicle and associate editor of the literary magazine FIELD and founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books. He is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College and teaches in the Masters of Fine Arts program of the University of Southern Maine.

ROBERT HASS is a poet, translator and essayist. Ecco/HarperCollins is publishing his forthcoming book of prose, What Light Can Do: Essays 1985- 2010. His other recent books include his selected poems, The Apple Trees at Olema (Ecco/HarperCollins), Time and Materials (Ecco/ HarperCollins), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and his edition of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and Other Poems (Counterpoint). His other books of poetry include Sun Under Wood: New Poems, Human Wishes, Praise, and Field Guide. He has also co-translated many volumes of the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz and is the author or editor of several other collections of essays and translations, including The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa; Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry; and Now & Then: The Poet's Choice Columns 1996- 2000. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, he is a professor of English at UC Berkeley and directs the Poetry Program of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.

SHARON OLDS’s most recent book, One Secret Thing, was published by Knopf in 2008. Her previous collection, a selected poems, Strike Sparks, appeared in 2004. Her other books of poetry include The Unswept Room; Blood, Tin, Straw; The Dead and the Living; The Wellspring; Satan Says; The Father; and The Gold Cell. She teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University, and helped found two ongoing outreach writing workshops: one 25 years ago at the Sigismund Goldwater Memorial Hospital, a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged; and one two years ago, for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. From 1998- 2000 she was New York State Poet Laureate, and she is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Knopf will publish her new book Stag's Leap in September.


CLAUDIA RANKINE is a poet and playwright. She has published several collections of poetry, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (Graywolf), Plot (Grove Press), and Nothing in Nature is Private (CSU Poetry Series), which won the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. With Juliana Spahr, Rankine co-edited American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language; and with Lisa Sewell, American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics. Her poems have been included in the anthologies Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present Best American Poetry, and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry. Her play Detour/ South Bronx premiered in 2009 at New York’s Foundry Theater. Rankine has been awarded fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she earned a BA at Williams College and an MFA at Columbia University.

C.D. WRIGHT is the author of more than a dozen books, most recently, One With Others: a little book of her days, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Leonore Marshall Prize. Her book Rising, Falling, Hovering won the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize. With photographer Deborah Luster she published One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana which won the Lange-Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. On a fellowship for writers from the Wallace Foundation she curated a “Walk-in Book of Arkansas,” a multi-media exhibition that toured throughout her native state. In 2004 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2005 she was given the Robert Creeley Award. Wright is from the Arkansas Ozarks. She lives in Rhode Island and is on the faculty at Brown University. She is married to poet Forrest Gander and they have a son, Brecht.

Please visit the Community of Writers' online press room to download photographs of the poets.

About Squaw Valley
Host of the 1960 Winter Olympics, Squaw Valley is a year-round mountain destination offering world-class adventures in every season. In summer, Squaw’s scenic Aerial Tram transports guests to elevation 8,200 feet to experience an array of exciting activities in a spectacular mountain setting including swimming, hiking, roller skating, paintball and ziplining. At the base of the mountain, Squaw’s vibrant Village offers shopping, al fresco dining, and music festivals all summer long.

For great summer lodging packages, call 1-866-366-7261 or visit www.squaw.com.

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