Mary Oliver

UNC Asheville’s Distinguished Speaker Series welcomes award-winning poet Mary Oliver to Lipinsky Auditorium at 8 p.m. Friday, March 30. The Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author has published over 25 volumes of poetry and prose. A book signing and reception will follow Oliver’s reading.

As a young writer in Ohio, Oliver became strongly influenced by the work of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. After writing to the late poet’s sister, Oliver was invited to visit Steepletop, Millay’s country house. It soon became the teenager’s second home. Profoundly inspired, Oliver went on to publish volumes of award-winning poetry and prose over the course of two decades.

Lauded as a keen observer of the natural world, the best-selling author is often compared to Whitman and Thoreau. The New York Times Book Review considers Oliver’s poems “thoroughly convincing—as genuine, moving and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring.” Oliver has received countless honors as well as fellowships with the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her most recent work, “Long Life: Essays and Other Writings,” was published in 2004. A longtime college professor, Oliver currently lives in Provincetown, Mass.

Tickets are $15 general admission, $10 for friends of the Asheville-Buncombe Library System with ID, or $6 for local students with ID. To reserve tickets by phone, call the UNC Asheville Box Office at 828/232-5000. Tickets may also be purchased with cash or check at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., downtown Asheville. (Sorry, this show is now sold out.)

Oliver’s talk is sponsored by UNC Asheville’s Office of Cultural & Special Events in conjunction with the Asheville-Buncombe Library System.

For more information about Oliver’s speaking engagement or the Cultural & Special Events season, call 828/251-6227 or click on www.unca.edu/culturalarts/.