Observable Readings

Former Leading Couple of St. Louis Poetry Along with Lisa Pepper and Lisa Ampleman Visit Observable Readings on March 4 at Schlafly Bottleworks

Monday, February 15, 2010 at 06:27 PM

Eric Pankey is the author of eight books: For the New Year, which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets; Heartwood, Apocrypha, The Late Romances, Cenotaph, which won the Poetry Award from the Library of Virginia; Oracle Figures, Reliquaries, and The Pear As One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984-2008. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A professor of English and the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University, he lives with his wife Jennifer Atkinson in Fairfax, VA. To read a sample of his work and an interview with Pankey, click here.

Jennifer Atkinson, a former University City and Brentwood resident, is the author of three collections of poetry: The Dogwood Tree, which won the University of Alabama Poetry Prize; The Drowned City, which won the Samuel French Morse Prize; and Drift Ice, which appeared in 2008 from Etruscan Press. She teaches in the MFA program in poetry at George Mason University. Click here to read a selection of her work.

The poetry of Lisa Pepper has appeared in Black Clock, Delmar, Literal Chaos, and River Styx. In 2005, she was featured in the documentary City of Asylum, which examined the life of the poet-in-exile Huang Xiang. She holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and resides in her native St. Louis, where she works as an editor for the Flora of China Project at the Missouri Botanical Garden. She is a member in good standing of the Linguae Latinae Botanicae Circulus Laborifer.

Lisa Ampleman received her MFA from George Mason University, where she studied with Eric Pankey and Jennifer Atkinson. Ampleman taught for several years at Fontbonne University in St. Louis. Currently she's working toward a PhD in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Big Muddy, Passages North, Notre Dame Review, Court Green, Natural Bridge, and other journals