Thank you William O’Daly! William O’Daly-Poet, Writer, Editor & Authorized Translator of the Work of Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, Fri. June 3rd, 1-2:30 PM, in the Library

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Author, Poet, Translator William O’Daly

The Lopez Island Library proudly welcomes award winning author, poet, and editor William O’Daly.  O’Daly’s work includes eight books of the late-career and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day, The Separate Rose, Winter Garden, The Sea and the Bells, The Yellow Heart, The Book of Questions, The Hands of Day, and World’s End), and two chapbooks of his own poems, The Whale in the Web and The Road to Isla Negra, from Copper Canyon Press and Folded Word Press, respectively. As a finalist for the 2006 Quill Award in Poetry, he was profiled by NBC news correspondent Mike Leonard on The Today Show. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have been published in a wide range of journals and anthologies. With co-author Han-ping Chin, he recently completed a historical novel, This Earthly Life, set amid the fascinating and deadly Chinese Cultural Revolution. This Earthly Life was selected as a “Finalist” in Narrative magazine’s 2009 Fall Story Contest.  He has studied with poets Philip Levine, Kenneth Rexroth, Alan Stephens, Fredrick Turner, John Ridland, and with modernist critic Hugh Kenner.  Under friend and mentor Sam Hamill, he served as assistant editor of Spectrum magazine and in 1972 he co-founded Copper Canyon Press. O’Daly has his M.F.A. in Poetry, Translation, and Literary Editing from Eastern Washington University.  This is an opportunity to listen to a remarkable writer in the intimate setting of the Lopez Island Library.