SELINSGROVE — Poet Fleda Brown will read from her work as part of the 2009-10 Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by The Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. The reading will be at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the university’s Isaacs Auditorium in Seibert Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Brown is the author of numerous works of poetry, including “Fishing with Blood” (Purdue University Press, 1988); “Breathing In, Breathing Out” (Anhinga Press, 2002); “The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives” (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2004); and “Reunion” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), which won the 2007 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. She is also the editor of two anthologies: “On the Mason-Dixon Line: An Anthology of Contemporary Delaware Writers” (University of Delaware Press, 2008), co-edited with Billie Travalini, and “Critical Essays on D.H. Lawrence” (G. K. Hall & Company, 1988), co-edited with Dennis Jackson.

“The neighborly language of local exchange and local enchantment, slipknot and memory, cell-stream and the surgeon’s knife, runs like springwater through the poems of Fleda Brown,” said poet and 2007 National Book Award finalist Linda Gregerson in an online review of Brown’s latest work, “Reunion.” Poet Sydney Lea, author of “Ghost Pain,” wrote that the “Reunion” collection of poems, “with their invariably eloquent details, are lessons in sharp observation and what it is to be a woman with a grand heart, a penetrating mind and, not least, a keen wit.”

Brown has received numerous awards for her work, including a 2009 Pushcart Prize for her poem, “The Kayak and the Eiffel Tower,” in The Southern Review. Her book of memoir essays, “Driving With Dvorak,” will appear next spring from the University of Nebraska Press. In addition, Brown and sculptor William Allen have an exhibition, “A Conversation Between Artists in Two Forms,” opening at the Dennos Museum in Traverse City, Mich., in April 2010.

Born in Missouri and raised in Arkansas, Brown earned her doctorate of philosophy degree in English, with a specialty in American Literature, from the University of Arkansas. In 1978, she joined the University of Delaware’s English department, where she founded the Poets in the Schools Program, serving as its director for more than 12 years.

Brown served as poet laureate of Delaware from 2001 to 2007, when she retired from the University of Delaware and moved to Traverse City, Mich. She writes a monthly column on poetry for the Traverse City Record-Eagle and delivers monthly commentary on poetry on Interlochen Public Radio. She currently teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.

Brown is the third of six writers scheduled to read at Susquehanna during the 2009-10 school year. Books by Brown will be available for purchase and signing following the reading.

The next reading will be given by Charles D’Ambrosio, author of “The Point” and “The Dead Fish Museum,” on Feb. 15 at 4:30 p.m. in the Degenstein Center Theater as part of the annual Undergraduate Literature and Creative Writing Conference held at Susquehanna.

For more information about programs sponsored by the Writers Institute and coming events, visit www.susqu.edu/writers.