Michael Sowder and Jennifer Sinor will be reading at Helicon West at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, at the True Aggie Cafe, 117 North and Main. This event is free and open to campus and community.

Sowder’s poetry collection “The Empty Boat” was chosen by Diane Wakoski to win the 2004 T.S. Eliot Prize, and his collection “A Calendar of Crows” won the New Michigan Press Award. His critical study of Walt Whitman titled “Whitman’s Ecstatic Union” was published by Routledge Press in 2005. His poetry and essays appear frequently in journals and magazines throughout the country. Most recently, his poem “American Life in Poetry” will be featured on Ted Kooser’s syndicated newspaper column. An associate professor at USU and poetry editor of “Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing,” he is currently working on a new collection of father-son poems, a collection of Buddhist poems and a spiritual memoir.

Sinor is the author of “The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing.” Her essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Fourth Genre, Ecotone and elsewhere. Most recently, her work was nominated for a National Magazine Award and won the 2009 Utah Original Writing competition for nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at USU.