Poet Elizabeth Dodd will read from her work at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, in Timmons Chapel, 409 E. Ford St. The event is open to the public.
A reception and book signing will follow, with books available for purchase. The reading is sponsored by the English and Modern Languages Department, the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series, and the Student Fee Council at Pittsburg State University.
Dodd’s poetry and essays often draw on the landscapes of the Great Plains. Essayist Chris Arthur called her most recent solo book, “Horizon’s Lens,” “a lyrical exploration of landscape, language, and history.”
While on campus, Dodd will lead a poetry workshop at WritersFest on Wednesday, Nov. 18. More than 320 high school students from across Kansas and Missouri are expected to come to Pitt State for the English program’s annual creative writing event.
Dodd taught creative writing and environmental literature at Kansas State University, where she retired in 2026. She is the author of two poetry collections, “Archetypal Light” (University of Nevada Press) and “Like Memory, Caverns,” which won the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award.
Her most recent solo book, “Horizon’s Lens: My Time on the Turning World” (University of Nebraska Press), blends memoir and travel writing to explore how people mark time in landscapes from the tallgrass prairie to the Yucatán.
Her essay collection “In the Mind’s Eye: Essays Across the Animate World,” won the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment’s Best Creative Book Award. She co-edited “Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy” (Trinity University Press) and has twice received the Kansas Arts Council’s Fellowship in Poetry.
— Pitt State —