Hampshire's Cristina Peña and Walker Staples Will Read in Five College PoetryFest

Cristina Peña 10F and Walker Staples 10F will represent Hampshire College in the 12th Annual Five College PoetryFest. It will be held Wednesday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Pruyne Lecture Hall in Fayerweather Hall at Amherst College. The event is free and open to the public.

PoetryFest celebrates the quality and range of student poetry with two writers representing each of the Five College schools—Hampshire, Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The inspiration of Lorna Peterson, former executive director of Five Colleges, Inc., and Ellen Doré Watson, director of the Smith College Poetry Center, PoetryFest annually rotates among the five campuses.

"The Five College PoetryFest is always a banquet of surprises, with a huge range in styles, both personal and poetic," says Watson. "It's a terrific celebration of the level of energy and craft going on in undergrad poetry in this valley."

The other participants this year are Joely DeSimone and Stella Honey Yoon of Amherst; Carrie Carter and Erika Onusseit of Mount Holyoke; Meredith Nnoka and Hannah Rousselot of Smith; and Martin Giordano and Victoria Palmatier of UMass. Each student will read for five minutes.

The reading will be followed by a reception, and booklets of the students' work will be available. For further information, contact Sue Dickman at 413.542.4023 or Daniel Hall at 413.542.8198.