UNC Asheville will host an evening with award-winning writer Robin Becker at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 30, in UNCA’s Owen Conference Center. Becker, who has been named UNCA’s 2002 P.B. Parris Visiting Writer, will read from recent work. The event is free and open to the public.

Becker is the author of five books of poetry, including "All-American Girl" (University of Pittsburgh Press 1996), which won the 1997 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. Also in 1997, Becker won the Virginia Faulkner Prize for Excellence in Writing from "Prairie Schooner" for an essay and long poem. Her most recent book, "The Horse Fair," (University of Pittsburgh Press 2000) examines a wide range of topics, including the Amish, an organ donor, yoga, a decrepit basset hound, a female scarecrow and trees damaged in a winter storm.

Associate professor of English and women’s studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Becker has received fellowships from several institutions, including the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She serves as poetry editor for "The Women’s Review of Books." During the 1998-1999 academic year, Becker was a visiting scholar at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies of the City University of New York.

Becker's visit is made possible by an endowment established by the friends of P.B. Parris, a retired UNCA creative writing professor and author of "Waltzing in the Attic."