Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn to visit Southeast Missouri State University

Former college basketball player and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn will make an appearance at Southeast Missouri State University to read some of his prized work.

Dunn was attended college at Hofstra University where he received his Bachelors of Arts in history and English and received his Masters of Arts in creative writing at Syracuse University. Dunn also played basketball at Hofstra University where he was on a basketball scholarship.

Dunn has published 14 collections of poetry and was the winner in the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. Dunn has also received awards such as the James Wright Prize, the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Theodore and Roethke Prize, the Levinson Prize, The Oscar Blumenthal Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation, and is a distinguished professor of creative writing at Richardson Stockton College of New Jersey.

"The funding for the reading of Stephen Dunn comes from the visitor writing series budget. Our goal is to present authors and to get the creative work to be listened to and heard," assistant editor and office manager of University Press Carrie Walker said.

Dunn's books of poetry include Lines of defense (W. W. Norton, 2014); Here and Now: Poems(W. W. Norton, 2011); What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 (2009); Everything Else in the World (2006); Local Visitations (2003); Different Hours (2000), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry; L (1996); New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994); Landscape at the End of the Century (1991); Between Angels (1989). Dunn was also an advertising copywriter for the company Nabisco and also served as an editor.

"What good literature has always done is give me the language with the occasion -- a lot of times not, of course," Dunn said in an interview with NPR's Rachel Martin in 2014. "But I think the poems that matter to me are the ones that speak to that which cannot easily be said."

"No, no, the poetry followed much later, but I was always a serious reader. I was not a particularly good student, and I was a pretty good basketball player. I've written an essay called "Basketball And Poetry," in which I try not to push the metaphor too far. But one of the points that I make in the essay is the similarity between poetry and basketball is the chance to be better than yourself, to transcend yourself, if you're hot that day. And that happens in writing in our best moments, where we find ourselves saying what we didn't know we knew or couldn't have said in any other circumstance. Those are the moments in poetry I live for now."

Besides writing and his passion for basketball, Dunn has also taught creative writing courses at Wichita State University, University of Washington, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Princeton University and the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

"I did not know much about Stephen Dunn until now," Southeast alumnus Michael Sullivan said. "I knew a little bit about his basketball career only because I'm really into ball. For him to also be an athlete and a writer, I think that is kind of a statement. Many people think of athletes as a stereotype, which means they're not all that smart. But this shows that stereotypes are often wrong. If I'm able to go I think I totally will, it seems like something I'd enjoy."

This event is open for not only the Southeast community, but it is also open to the public.

"We are very excited for a Pulitzer Prize winner to come to campus, it should be a good turn out," Walker said.

The reading will be presented at 7 p.m. April 16 in Rose Theatre and is a part of the Dorothy and Wedel Nilsen Visiting Writer Series.