Western Carolina University's Lectures, Concerts, and Exhibitions Ebony Students' Association and Visiting Writers Series invite you to join poet Brenda Marie Osbey

reading from her work Monday, September 21, 7:30 PM A.K. Hinds University Center Grand room Admission $5 for adults, $3 for non-WCU students and seniors WCU students with valid I.D. admitted free Reception & Book Signing in Chelsea Gallery following the reading "i have never avoided the tombed cities i was taught to tarry in. and i have not let my dead lie."

Brenda Marie Osbey invokes, impersonates, and converses with her Afro-New Orleans forebearsboth blood ancestors and spiritual predecessorsweaving in hypnotic cadence a spell as potent as the religious and magical mysteries of her native culture. Osbey lives in New Orleans and has published four volumes of poetry: Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman; In These Houses; Ceremony for Minneconjoux, and All Saints. The recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and the Academy of American Poets Loring-Williams Prize, she has been a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Millay Colony, and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.

Osbey will talk informally and answer questions on Tuesday, September 22 at 10:00 AM in the UC Cardinal Room with New Orleans artist Tina Girouard. Girouard's art is on display through Sept. 22 at WCU's Chelsea Gallery. She will do a slide presentation of her work on Monday, September 21 at 4:00 PM in the U.C. Grand Room.