OCTC's Common Reading Selection "Next Door to the Dead"

Author Scheduled to Visit on April 14

by Bernie Hale

Owensboro, KY (12/28/2021) — Owensboro Community & Technical College (OCTC) is continuing the campus wide Common Reading program and invites the community to participate in all the related events. The book for the Spring 2022 semester is Next Door to the Dead, a book of poems by Kathleen Driskell. The book is a Kentucky Voices selection by the University Press of Kentucky and winner of the 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award.

Driskell lives in an old church outside Louisville, which is adjacent to an abandoned graveyard. These "neighbors" were her inspiration for this book of poetry. She weaves stories from the gravestones and epitaphs, utilizing unique perspectives including the caretaker, and a flock of birds. Driskel creates connects between the worlds and brings a new examination of her own mortality and the impact we can have on those around us.

The author is scheduled to be on campus Thursday, April 14 at 12:30 p.m. in Blandford Lecture Hall, and the event will be livestreamed. The college reserves the option to adjust events based on current health protocols. All events related to the Common Reading will be posted at facebook.com/octccommonread and are free and open to the public. For more information please contact tonya.northenor@kctcs.edu.

About the Author

Kathleen Driskell is Chair of the Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing, home of the nationally distinguished low-residency MFA in Writing program. She is the author of the poetry collections, including Blue Etiquette: Poems, a finalist for the Weatherford Award, Next Door to the Dead, a Kentucky Voices selection by the University Press of Kentucky and winner of the 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award, Seed Across Snow, a Poetry Foundation national bestseller, Laughing Sickness, and Peck and Pock: A Graphic Poem.

With Katy Yocom, she co-edited the anthology Creativity & Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate Twenty Years. Individual poems and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, North American Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Greensboro Review, Rattle, Mid-American Review, and Appalachian Review, among others, and have been featured in anthologies and online at Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and American Life in Poetry. She was awarded the Appalachian Review 2020 Denny C. Plattner Award in Creative Nonfiction for an essay that was also listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2020. Other awards include grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and she has received prizes from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and the Frankfort Arts Foundation.

Driskell currently serves as chair of the board of directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the largest professional organization of creative writers in the U.S., and she founded and served two terms as chair of the Low-Residency MFA Directors' Caucus, which meets annually at the national AWP conferences. She received the Trustees Outstanding Faculty Award from Spalding University and served as faculty representative to the Spalding Board of Trustees. She is also a member of the editorial board of The University Press of Kentucky. Driskell received her MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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