COFFEE WITH THE POETS Featured Special Guest Poet Kathryn Stripling Byer

Kathryn Stripling Byer, NC Poet Laureate gave a special reading of her poems at Phillips and Lloyd Bookstore in Hayeville,NC on February 11, 2009. Kathryn Stripling Byer's reading marked the official opening of the 2009 monthly poetry reading program sponsored by NC Writers Network West that is held at the bookstore. The program features a guest poet each month and there is always an open mic reading. Poets within driving distance are wecome.


Kathryn Stripling Byer grew up in southwest Georgia, graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she studied with Allen Tate, Fred Chappell, and Robert Watson. Her books of poetry include Coming To Rest (Louisiana State University 2006) Catching Light (Louisiana State University Press, 2002); Black Shawl (1998); Wildwood Flower (1992), which was the 1992 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986), which was published in the Associated Writing Programs award series.

Byer's poems have appeared in Arts Journal, Carolina Quarterly, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Nimrod, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as numerous anthologies. Her essays have appeared in Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers (edited by Joyce Dyer; University Press of Kentucky, 1998), Dream Garden: The Poetic Vision of Fred Chappell (edited by Patrick Bizzaro; Louisiana State University Press, 1997), The Boston Globe, and Shenandoah.

Kathryn Stripling Byer has received writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is poet-in-residence at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.