Pulitzer Prize winner is 24th Smith reader

On Mar. 28 and 29, OCU hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown for the 24th annual Thatcher Hoffman Smith poetry series.

Brown is a graduate from Dillard University, earned his MFA from the University of New Orleans, and his Ph. D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Huston.

He is currently the director of the creative writing program at Emory University, as well we an associate professor.

Brown has written three books, “Please,” published in 2008; “The New Testament,” 2014; and “The Tradition,” 2019; with a new edi- tion named “The Tradition: Civic Dialogue Edition” released in 2022.

On Mar. 28, Brown held a poetry workshop. English professor Dr. Tracy Floreani explained that this workshop was “primarily intended for area middle- and highschool teachers, so they can learn from living writers and spread the joy to their students.”

“We also invite English pro - fessors from OCU and other area colleges, as well as a few are poets who are doing public outreach in some form or another,” she said.

Floreani explained that this year was the 24th annual Thatcher Hoffman Smith poetry series and that, “The series began in 1999. An English professor here at the time had studied with the poet Robert Pinsky, so when the donation was