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'BONE WOMAN' AUTHOR, POET ON CAMPUS

Award-winning authors at Penn State Brandywine

 

Two award-winning authors will visit Penn State Brandywine on Wednesday and Thursday, April 12 and 13, to give readings and discuss their works.

On Wednesday, April 12, Macedonian poet Lidija Dimkovska will give two public presentations and readings in conjunction with campus creative writing and poetry classes at 12:30 and at 2:30 p.m. in the John D. Vairo Library Lounge. Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers, Dimkovska's American debut, contains a representative sampling of her poems, including some that were featured in American Poetry Review and other American journals.

Lidija Dimkovska was born in 1971 in Skopje. She has lived in Bucharest, where she attained a doctoral degree in Romanian literature, and now lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her prize-winning debut collection Progenies of the East was published in 1992, and she has since written three more books of poetry (Fire of Letters, Bitten Nails, and Nobel vs. Nobel), and has edited an anthology of young Macedonian poets. Her first collection in English, Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers, was published in March 2006 in the Eastern European Poets Series by Ugly Duckling Presse.

The Bone Woman: The following day, Thursday, April 13, Clea Koff, author of The Bone Woman, the remarkable account of the examination of mass graves in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo, will visit the campus to share her experiences and read excerpts from the book. Her appearance will take place in the Classroom Building Lounge from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The Bone Woman recounts how a team of scientists, including Ms. Koff, a 23 year old forensic anthropologist, discovered gruesome remains from genocidal killings in Rwanda in 1994. It also tells of other missions she would later undertake as a member of a United Nations team that surveyed other mass graves.

Koff, who kept a meticulous journal of her activities, converted that journal to lucid and poetic prose that confronts mortality squarely and underscores the extraordinary inhumanity that human beings are capable of. She writes about the grisliest details with grace, luminosity, accuracy, and even lyricism.

View the web photo gallery of Clea Koff's visit to the campus.

In addition to the readings, there will also be special book-signing events with each of the authors. Admission is free to both appearances, and refreshments will be provided.

The campus is located on Route 352, in Lima, just four miles southwest of Exit 5 - Route 1 of the Blue Route (I-476). For more information, call 610-892-1372.

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