RELEASED: Jan. 6, 2005

DANVILLE, KY—The Centre College English Program will sponsor a free poetry reading by Julia Johnson on Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. in the Norton Center for the Arts boardroom on campus.

Poet Lisa Williams, assistant professor of English at Centre, comments, "In her beguiling poems, Julia Johnson gives a world in which familiar objects—a shovel, a glass of milk, a woman's comb—become uncanny metaphors in an odd landscape, as in a nightmare or dream."

Williams adds, "Johnson is a master of the surreal, but there's remarkable beauty to her language and imagery, in addition to distinctive strangeness."

Johnson will serve as visiting writer-in-residence on campus during the CentreTerm. She will teach a poetry writing workshop.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Julia Johnson attended Hollins University in Virginia, where she earned a B.A. degree in English in 1993. She received a M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the University of Virginia in 1995.

Johnson's debut collection of poetry, Naming the Afternoon, was published in 2002 by LSU Press. The poems, influenced by Johnson's New Orleans upbringing but not drawn from any specific place, are mysterious—yet they inhabit a world of reason and explanation.

Johnson has won the Academy of American Poets Prize three times and was the recipient of the 2003 Fellowship of Southern Writers' New Writing Award in Poetry.

Johnson's poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Southeast Review, Third Coast, Eclipse, 64, and New Orleans Review.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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