UNCA’s Center for Jewish Studies and Women’s Studies Program will host a talk by poet Jacqueline Osherow at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 15, at UNCA’s Laurel Forum, Karpen Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Osherow’s talk will focus on "Dead Men’s Praise," her fourth book of poetry. Esteemed poet and writer Maxine Kumin offers high praise for the book, stating, "A rare combination of wit and intellect informs these ambitious poems, which maintain a conversational tone of voice even as they range over subjects as diverse as Italian Renaissance paintings, Jonathan Edwards and the western tanager." In many of her poems, Osherow offers ingenious responses to Biblical texts. Her poems are also haunted by a long history of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust.

Osherow is director of the master of fine arts program in creative writing at the University of Utah. Her other books include "Looking for Angels in New York," "Conversations with Survivors" and "With Moon in Transit." She was recently awarded the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Asheville-Hendersonville Chapter of Hadassah and the Horowitz Memorial Fund.

For more information, call UNCA’s Center for Jewish Studies at 828/251-6576.