PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts Project kicks off its new literary series, Next Stage Speaks, on Thursday, May 15, at 7 p.m. with renowned author Jay Parini. Host is the poet Chard DeNiord.
Parini is a poet, novelist, biographer, and critic. His five books of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems (George Braziller, 2005).
He also has written eight novels, including Benjamin's Crossing (Henry Holt & Co., 1997), The Apprentice Lover (Harper Perennial, 2003), and The Passages of H.M. and The Last Station, both released by Random House in 2010.
The latter was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer.
Parini has written biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. His non-fiction works include Jesus: The Human Face of God, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), Why Poetry Matters (Yale University Press, 2008), and Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America (Random House, 2010).
He writes for the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Next Stage Speaks format will feature DeNiord interviewing Parini about his career as a novelist, poet, critic, screenwriter, and professor, and his recent works. The interview will be followed by a reading, which itself is followed by a question-and-answer session.
DeNiord is author of four books of poems, The Double Truth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), which was named one of the 10 best books of poetry in 2011 by The Boston Globe, Night Mowing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003), and Asleep in the Fire (University of Alabama Press, 1990).
He also is author of a book of interviews with seven senior American poets (Galway Kinnell, Ruth Stone, Jack Gilbert, Lucille Clifton, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, Robert Bly) titled Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs: Conversations and Reflections on Contemporary American Poetry (Marick Press, 2011).
DeNiord's fifth book of poems, Interstate, is forthcoming in 2015 from University of Pittsburgh Press. Co-founder of the New England College MFA program in poetry, he is a professor of English at Providence College and a Westminster West resident.