MARY JO BANG IN CONVERSATION WITH MATTHIAS GÖRITZ

Please join us for a reading and conversation with Mary Jo Bang in celebration of the release of her book Colonies of Paradise: Poems, a translation of the poet Matthias Göritz, who will be joining her in conversation.

Mary Jo Bang was born in Missouri and grew up in Cool Valley, outside of St. Louis. She originally studied sociology, earning both her BA and MA in the subject from Northwestern University. She earned a BA in photography from the Polytechnic of Central London, and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including A Doll for Throwing (2017); The Last Two Seconds (2015); The Bride of E (2009); Elegy (2007), which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award; Louise in Love (2001); The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (2001); and Apology for Want (1997), which received the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize. In 2012 she published a translation of Inferno by Dante Allegheri.

Matthias Göritz (b. 1969, Hamburg) has taught at many German Universities as well as at Bard College in New York. A recipient of numerous fellowships, he has spent time in several European cities as well as New York and Chicago. His first book of poems, [Loops], was published in 2001 in German. He has contributed prose and poetry to many magazines, anthologies, and the major German newspapers, e.g.  Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Welt.  With Chong Heyong, he co-translated Kim Kwang Kyu’s [The Depth of the Shell];  and frequently translates from the English for the journal Sprache im technischen Zeitalter, where he is also a contributing editor. He is participating courtesy of Max Kade German Writer in Residence Program.

Co-sponsored by Translation, Classics, and Ancient Exchanges, The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the International Writing Program.