Rae Armantrout w/ Stephanie Young

DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout to the store to discuss and sign, Partly: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2015, on Friday, October 14th at 7:00pm. Joining her in conversation will be local poet and teacher Stephanie Young.

Rae Armantrout’s poetry comprises one of the most refined and visionary bodies of work written over the last forty years. These potent, compact meditations on our complicated times reveal her observant sensibility, lively intellect, and emotional complexity. This generous volume charts the evolution of Armantrout’s mature, stylistically distinct work. In addition to 25 new poems, there are selections from her books Up To Speed, Next Life, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winning volume Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, and Itself. Including some of her most brilliant pieces,Partly affirms Armantrout’s reputation as one of our sharpest and most innovative writers. An online reader’s companion is available at raearmantrout.site.wesleyan.edu.

Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing in the literature department at the University of California at San Diego. She has taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Bard College, Naropa University, San Diego State University, and San Francisco State University. Armantrout’s latest book is Partly: 2001–2015, an anthology spanning some of her most salient works and containing never-before published poems. Her 2009 collection, Versed, received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Armantrout earned her MA at San Francisco State University in 1975. She lives in San Diego, CA.

Stephanie Young’s collections of poetry include Telling the Future Off, Picture Palace,and Ursula or University. She edited the anthology Bay Poetics and is a founding editor of the online anthology/“museum” of Oakland, Deep Oakland. Young’s own work engages communities of all kinds, as well as cross-genre and hybrid writing, performance, and new media. Young teaches at Mills College, where she is also the Graduate Programs director and she lives in Oakland, California.