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FVCC to Host Free Poetry Readings

By Beacon Staff

The Continuing Education Center at Flathead Valley Community College will host a free poetry reading by FVCC English Professor Lowell Jaeger and former FVCC student Hannah Bissell on Nov. 13.

Jaeger will read poems from his most recent collection, “How Quickly What’s Passing Goes Past.” In addition, the evening will feature Jaeger’s long-time student and protégé Hannah Bissell reading poems from her first collection, “The Midnight Spring.”

Jaeger has taught creative writing at FVCC for 30 years. He is the author of five collections of poems and founding editor of Many Voices Press, a non-profit, all volunteer literary press based on the FVCC campus which aims to serve Montana writers with special emphasis on Native American writers. Jaeger is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize and recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council. Most recently, he was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting civic discourse.

Bissell started taking poetry courses from Jaeger at age 17 and has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in Missoula and a Master of Fine Arts from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore.

Both Jaeger and Bissell have worked together managing FVCC’s Many Voices Press since 2006. With Jaeger as editor and Bissell as assistant editor, Many Voices Press has published three highly-acclaimed volumes of work by three Montana Native American poets—Victor A. Charlo, Lois Red Elk and Minerva Allen. Two notable anthologies—“Poems Across the Big Sky,” an anthology of Montana poets, and “New Poets of the American West,” an anthology of poets from western states, also were published through Many Voices Press.

The reading will take place at 7 p.m. in the large community meeting room inside the Arts and Technology Building on the FVCC campus. For more information, contact the FVCC Continuing Education Center at 756-3832, or email [email protected]