Poet Elise Paschen joins Vanderbilt Reading Series – October 8
Poet Elise Paschen will join the 2026-2027 Gertrude C. & Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series on October 8.
The evening will begin with a literary salon at 6:30 PM, followed by a public reading at 7:00 and a book-signing at 8:00.
Thursday, October 8
Vanderbilt Special Collections Library, 1101 19th Avenue South, Nashville
Elise Paschen is the author of six poetry collections, most recently, Blood Wolf Moon (winner of the Foreword Indie Book of the Year Award in Poetry and the Oklahoma Book Award in Poetry), as well as Tallchief, The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and Houses: Coasts. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she received the Garrison Medal for Poetry, and she holds M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from Oxford University. An enrolled member of the Osage Nation, Paschen has received the Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs Medal.
Paschen’s poems have been published in Poetry Magazine and The New Yorker, among other outlets, and in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry and A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. She is the editor of The Eloquent Poem: 128 Contemporary Poems and Their Making, as well as The New York Times best-selling anthology, Poetry Speaks to Children, and co-editor of Poetry Speaks and Poetry in Motion, among other anthologies. Former Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, she is a co-founder of Poetry in Motion, a nationwide program which places poetry posters in subway cars and buses. Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Read the full press release. [pdf]
The Gertrude C. and Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series is named in honor of Vanderbilt founder Cornelius Vanderbilt’s great-grandson and his wife. Each semester, the series brings several professional writers to campus to read from their works and visit classes. This unique and extraordinary program gives English department students and faculty, the Vanderbilt community, and Nashville’s citizens a chance to meet and talk with some of the best writers of our day.
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