EVENT:
In celebration of its 40th anniversary, UC Irvine's Department of English and Comparative Literature invites the public to a poetry reading by founding faculty member James McMichael. An award-winning poet and co-director of UCI's highly ranked graduate program in creative writing, McMichael will read from his book "Capacity," forthcoming in 2006 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Born and raised in Pasadena, Calif., McMichael is considered in literary circles as one of the nation's finest poets. He writes about everyday things -- marriages, houses, fishing. Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky calls McMichael "a very great genius who discovers the profound in the ordinary."

DATE:
Saturday, March 12

TIME:
7 p.m.

LOCATION:
Crystal Cove Auditorium, UCI Student Center. Campus map: www.uci.edu/campusmap

INFORMATION:
Free and open to the public. Book sale and signing will follow the reading. For more information, call (949) 824-6712.

BACKGROUND:
McMichael is the only founding English and comparative literature department faculty member still teaching at UCI. His books of poetry include "The World at Large: New and Selected Poems, 1971-1996," "Each in a Place Apart," "Four Good Things" and "The Lover's Familiar." He is the recipient of the Arthur O. Rense Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's Award, and the Shelley Memorial Award.

This event is part of a one-day conference titled "The UCI English Department at 40: A Celebration of Jim McMichael," which many UCI creative writing graduates will attend.

UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit: www.today.uci.edu/experts.