James Pollock

media release: The 2024 Winter Writers Reading Series will feature award-winning Wisconsin writers reading from their work on select Wednesday evenings. Shake Rag Alley is excited to partner with Mineral Point’s independent bookstore for our 2024 reading series. Unless noted, readings will be held at Republic of Letters Books, 151 High St., Mineral Point, at 7 p.m. Readings will be followed by Q&A with the authors, with time for Open Mic, and refreshments.

Wednesday, March 13: James Pollock won the Wisconsin Writers Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award. He is the author of Durable Goods (Véhicule Press/Signal Editions), which won the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award from the Arts + Literature Laboratory and made The Miramichi Reader‘s list of the best poetry books of 2022; and Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press, 2012), a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. He is also the author of You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2012), a finalist for the ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays; and editor of The Essential Daryl Hine (The Porcupine’s Quill), which made Partisan magazine’s list of the best books of 2015. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, AGNI, Plume, and many other journals. They have also won the Manchester Poetry Prize, the Magma Editors’ Prize, and the Guy Owen Prize from Southern Poetry Review, and have been reprinted in anthologies in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., including The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry. He graduated from York University in Toronto, earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and is now Professor of English at Loras College. He lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin.