News Release

Wordsmiths Reading Series Presents Prize-Winning Memoirist, Poet

Madeleine Blais, who won a Pultizer Prize, will read from her memoirs, joined by award-winning poet Hayden Saunier Nov. 5

The Wordsmiths Reading Series at Bucks County Community College brings two prominent authors to Newtown Thursday, November 5. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Madeleine Blais, who wrote Uphill Walkers: The Memoir of a Family, will be joined by award-winning poet Hayden Saunier at 7 p.m. in the Fireside Lounge. Admission is free.

Blais (left) has won widespread praise for Uphill Walkers, which chronicles how her family pulled together after her father died suddenly in the early 1950s. She’s also written In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle and The Heart Is an Instrument; Portraits in Journalism.

Blais was a reporter for the Boston Globe, the Trenton Times, and Tropic Magazine of the Miami Herald from 1979-87. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing while at the Miami Herald. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1986. She has also written for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Northeast Magazine in the Hartford Courant, Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, Nieman Reports, Detroit Free Press, and San Jose Mercury News. Blais is currently a professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Saunier’s poetry has appeared in many publications, including Nimrod, Rattle, Philadelphia Stories, and Mad Poets Review. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was the winner of the 2005 Robert Fraser Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2007 Liam Rector First Book Prize. An actress and voice-over artist, her film and television credits include “The Sixth Sense,” “Philadelphia Diary” and “Hack.” Saunier (right) is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her collection of poems, Tips for Domestic Travel, was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award.

The Fireside Lounge is located in the lower level of the Rollins Center (Student Union) on the campus at 275 Swamp Rd., Newtown, Pa., 18940.

The Wordsmiths Reading Series is another way that Bucks County Community College contributes to the cultural heritage of the region. It’s sponsored by the college’s Cultural Affairs Committee and Language and Literature Department. For more information, call 215-968-8159.