Pulitzer-Prize Winning Poet to Receive 19th Annual Corrington Award

Paul Muldoon

SHREVEPORT, La. — Centenary College will present the 2009 Corrington Award for Literary Excellence to Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon at a public reading Thursday, Jan. 22. beginning at 7 p.m. in the Whited Room located in Bynum Commons on Centenary's campus.

Muldoon is the 19th recipient of the award, and will read from his own work, past and current. Sponsored by the Centenary English Department, the event is free and open to the public.

Muldoon was born in Northern Ireland and moved to the United States in 1987. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1990 and directed the University's Program in Creative Writing from 1993 until 2002. A former Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, he is currently Howard G. B. Clark '21 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University where he is Chair of the Lewis Arts Center and Chair of the Fund for Irish Studies. Muldoon is also the current Poetry Editor for The New Yorker. He lives with his family in Princeton, N.J.

Among Muldoon's collections of poetry are: "New Weather" (1973), "Mules" (1977), "Why Brownlee Left" (1980), "Meeting the British" (1987), "Madoc: A Mystery" (1990), "The Annals of Chile" (1994), "Hay" (1998), "Poems 1968‐1998" (2001), "Moy Sand and Gravel" (2003; winner of 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry), and "Horse Latitudes" (2006) . He also has published in the fields of drama, literary criticism, translation and children's literature.

Muldoon will be meeting with classes and meeting with students informally during his visit to the College

For more information about the Corrington Award, contact Jeff Hendricks, Professor of English and Film Studies, at 820.1414.

About the Corrington Award

Named for a Centenary alumnus who authored the short novel Decoration Day, the John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence takes the form of a bronze medal designed by the internationally acclaimed Louisiana sculptor Clyde Connell. Previous recipients include poets as well as novelists: Eudora Welty, Ernest J. Gaines, James Dickey, Lee Smith, Paul Auster, Elizabeth Spencer, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, Eavan Boland, Debora Greger and William Logan, and, last year, Louisiana native and Pulitzer Prize‐winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa.