Poet and UNCA professor Richard Chess will read at Malaprop’s, Sept. 17

Press release:

Poet and essayist Richard Chess will read from his new book, Love Nailed to the Doorpost, when the Writers at Home series returns from summer hiatus at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 17, at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café, 55 Haywood St., in downtown Asheville. This event, hosted by UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program, is free and open to everyone.

Chess describes his latest book as “poems and lyrical prose inspired and informed equally by the pleasures and pressures of everyday life and by sacred and secular texts ranging from Torah to Basho to Robert Creeley. This new work transports us from the biblical past to the present, from creation stories to stories of brotherly struggle to meditations on married and family love.”

The chair of UNC Asheville’s Department of English, Chess is the Roy Carroll Professor of Honors Arts and Sciences and he has directed the university’s Center for Jewish Studies for the past 25 years. He is the author of three previous books of poetry: Tekiah, Chair in the Desert, and Third Temple, and his poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies.

Chess blogs at https://richard-chess.squarespace.com/blog/ and publishes essays regularly at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/goodletters/tag/richard-chess/.

The Writers at Home series is curated and hosted by novelist Tommy Hays, director of UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program. The series features readings by different local writers the third Sunday of each month at Malaprop’s. For more information about the series and about UNC Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program, call the program at 828.250.2353 or visit unca.edu/gswp.