Stephanie Burt
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Poetry

Stephanie Burt

Past Event: Monday, October 9, 2017

At McCaw Hall — Nesholm Family Lecture Hall

Haiku Sponsor: MFA in Poetry & Poetics, UW Bothell

This series is sponsored by Charles B. & Barbara Wright

Widely regarded as “one of the most influential poetry critics of her generation” (New York Times), Burt is the author of several books of criticism and four volumes of poetry, including her latest, Advice from the Lights.

Burt’s works of criticism include The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them; Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Art of the Sonnet, written with David Mikics; The Forms of Youth: 20th-Century Poetry and Adolescence; Randall Jarrell on W.H. Auden, written with Hannah Brooks-Motl; and Randall Jarrell and His Age.

Burt has published three collections of poems: BelmontParallel Play, and Popular Music. In October of 2017, Graywolf Press will publish Advice from the Lights, a new collection that finds the poet recalling “My 1982” and other specific childhood years.

In 2012, the New York Times Magazine ran a profile with the headline “Poetry’s Cross-Dressing Kingmaker,” identifying Burt publicly for the first time as transgender. Burt—who answers to Stephen, Steph, and Stephanie—has since written about having two genders in poetry works such as the chapbook “All-Season Stephanie,” as well as in essays such as “My Life as a Girl” and “The Body of the Poem.”

Burt, whose essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Review, and other publications, grew up in and around Washington, D.C., attended Harvard, Oxford, and Yale in the late 1980s and ’90s, and taught at Macalester College in Saint Paul for seven years before returning to Massachusetts and settling there.

Selected Works:

Criticism

Randall Jarrell and His Age (2002)
The Forms of Youth: Twentieth-Century Poetry and Adolescence (2007)
Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (2009)
The Art of the Sonnet (2010)
The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (2016)

Poetry

Popular Music (1999)
Parallel Play (2006)
Belmont (2013)
Advice from the Lights (2017)

Event Details

McCaw Hall — Nesholm Family Lecture Hall

321 Mercer St
Seattle, WA 98109

View directions.

This event will be held in the Nesholm Family Lecture Hall. The Lecture Hall is located in the lower level of Marion Oliver McCaw Hall at Seattle Center. The entrance to the hall is on the north side of the building and east of the main entrance; it directly faces Mercer St. and the door is under the bridge to the Mercer Street Garage.

Transportation & Parking

By Car

  • From I-5
    Take Mercer Street exit (exit 167) and go straight onto Mercer Street westbound. Turn right onto 4th Avenue. Turn left to park in the Seattle Center Mercer Street Garage.
  • From Aurora/Hwy 99 Northbound
    Take the Western Avenue exit. Continue straight on Western Avenue. Turn right onto Battery Street. Turn left onto 1st Avenue. Turn right on Mercer Street. Continue down Mercer Street to drop off patrons directly in front of McCaw Hall, or turn left on 3rd or 4th Avenues to park in the Seattle Center Mercer Street Garage.
  • From Aurora/Hwy 99 Southbound
    Exit right on Roy Street. Turn left on 3rd Avenue North. Turn left to park in the Seattle Center Mercer Street Garage or proceed to the corner of 3rd Avenue and Mercer Street, turn left and proceed immediately to the far right lane to drop off patrons directly in front of McCaw Hall.

By Bus
Bus routes with Seattle Center stops include: 1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 33, and 82. For more information about the routes nearest you, call Metro’s 24-hour Rider Information hotline at (206) 553-3000 or visit Metro online.

Parking
Parking is available at the Mercer Street Garage, conveniently located across the street from McCaw Hall. A covered skybridge provides easy access between level C of the garage and McCaw Hall.

Other garages and parking options are:

  • Fisher Plaza Garage, located in the KOMO Plaza on 4th Avenue N, between Broad St and John St. The entrance is at 451 John St. The quickest way to get to McCaw Hall from here is to walk across the Seattle Center campus, starting from the Space Needle. SAL offers a $5 voucher for this garage. Vouchers may be picked up at SAL’s box office or info table.
  • 5th Avenue North Garage, located at the corner of 5th Avenue and Harrison Street. This is the first garage you will encounter after exiting I-5 and turning onto Harrison Street. It is a 3-block walk to McCaw Hall from this garage.
  • Surface lots are available on either side of Mercer Street between 3rd and 1st Avenues.
  • Southwest Seattle Center garages, for those willing and able to make the short walk across the Seattle Center campus, there are garages located on 1st Avenue North between Thomas and John Streets (south of KeyArena), at the corner of Warren Avenue North and Denny Way (adjacent to the church), and on 2nd Avenue North and Denny Way (adjacent to Pacific Science Center).

Accessibility

All of our venues have accessible seating and listening devices available. Click here for more information about accessibility and ADA services at McCaw Hall.

Please contact us at sal@lectures.org or 206.621.2230 x10 for more details and to let us know you’re coming so we can better accommodate your needs.

Sponsors

Opus Sponsor

Charles B. & Barbara Wright

Public program support provided by