Events

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Lexington’s own Liz Knowles, Celtic fiddler, will play at Transylvania University on Thursday, Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. Tickets are $10 and are available weekdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in MFA 113 (cash only) and can also be purchased at the door. Knowles rose to popularity when she was fiddler for Riverdance and soloist on the soundtrack for the film Michael Collins. She is a respected musician, composer and teacher who has traveled the world, performing with renowned orchestras such as the Celtic Legends, New York Pops and Cincinnati Pops. In New York City she has performed at Carnegie Hall and on Broadway with fellow artists Marcus Roberts, the Bang-on-a-Can Orchestra, and Bobby McFerrin. She has also appeared in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Her latest work, “Making Time,” explores “both familiar and obscure” Irish music from Irish, Scottish, and Medieval collections while combining Knowles’ unique harmonies (lizknowles.com). Knowles has also established herself as an admired teacher of Irish music. She has taught at the Swannanoa Gathering for their Celtic and Fiddle weeks, the Catskills Irish Art Week, and at many Irish piping festivals with her husband. The event is sponsored by the Transylvania music department.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Kentucky Women Writers Conference comes to Transylvania University for a poetry slam featuring author Tara Betts. Bianca Spriggs, a 2003 Transylvania graduate and the founder and artistic director of the slam, will emcee the Gypsy Poetry Slam at 7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 21 in Carrick Theater of the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public. With Tara Betts, author of Arc and Hue, as slam headliner and celebrity judge, poets will compete for a top prize of $500 in a live, multi-round competition with audience judging. The evening will showcase work by eleven national and local women poets. Prior to the competition will be an open mic at 6:30 p.m. Contact Spriggs at bianncaspriggs@gmail.com to sign up for the open mic. Betts, a Ph.D. candidate at Binghamton University, is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, was featured on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam,” performed at The New School in New York City, and has been published in various journals and anthologies including XXL, The Source, BIBR, Mosaic Magazine and Black Radio Exclusive. The Kentucky Women Writers Conference is founded by the University of Kentucky and is the longest standing conferences for women writers in the nation and is celebrating its 34th year. For a full list of events or to register for the conference visit their website.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The Kentucky Civil War Round Table and Transylvania University will host a presentation by David Blight Monday, Sept. 17 at 6:30 p.m. in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center’s Haggin Auditorium. The lecture is titled “Civil War and Emancipation in American Memory, Then and Now.” Blight is a professor of history at Yale University and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Following the presentation, Blight will answer questions from the audience. Yale calls Blight “one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the US Civil War and its legacy.” He served  on the board of advisers to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and is the author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era. He spoke at Transylvania’s Presidential Inaugural symposium in the spring of 2011.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Poet and professor Nikky Finney, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, will deliver the convocation address for the beginning of the academic year at Transylvania University on Sunday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m. in Haggin Auditorium. Her presentation is entitled “The Art of Being Taken With Yourself.” Finney is Guy Davenport Endowed Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. Her 2011 collection of poems, Head Off & Split, was published by Northwestern University Press and won the National Book Award. The collection caused critics to hail Finney as “…one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today….” (Kwame Dawes, author of Hope’s Hospice) and as a writer who “…takes the reader to a wonderfully alive world where the musical possibilities of language overflow with surprise and innovation.” (Bruce Weigl, author of What Saves Us)  Finney was raised in South Carolina as the daughter of a civil rights attorney and a teacher and came of age during the civil rights and black arts movements. Those facts of her upbringing continue to exert powerful influences on her writing and teaching. Many of her poems relate intimately to emblematic figures and events in African American life, from civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. The National Book Award nominating form said that Finney’s poems dramatize the struggle for justice and speak of “…family and politics, violence and compassion;

Read “National Book Award winner Nikky Finney to address Transylvania convocation on Sunday, Sept. 9, at 7 p.m.; free and open to the public”