West Virginia Wesleyan College’s English Department will feature a reading by Mary Ann Samyn, an instructor in the MFA creative writing program at West Virginia University, on Monday, April 3, in Nellie Wilson lounge at 7 p.m.

Samyn is the author of four collections of poetry: Rooms by the Sea (winner of the 1994 Kent State UP/Wick Chapbook Prize), Captivity Narrative (winner of the 1999 Ohio State UP/The Journal Prize), Inside the Yellow Dress (a 2001 New Issues Press/Green Rose Selection), and Purr (New Issues 2005).  Her poems and reviews have appeared in many literary journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Field, Denver Quarterly, Electronic Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Ohio Review, among many others, and in the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation and Poetry 30: Thirty American Thirtysomething Poets.

A 2001 Creative Artist Grant recipient from ArtServe Michigan, Samyn was awarded the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America (2002) and the James Wright Prize from Mid-American Review (2003).  She has read and conducted workshops at colleges and universities across the country, including Cornell University, The University of Colorado—Denver, St. John's University, Marshall University, Waynesburg College, and elsewhere.

Since 1998, she has taught each summer at The Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers (ages 15-20), and is the founder and director of Oakland University’s Far Field Retreat for Writers (www2.oakland.edu/english/farfield), now in its sixth year.

She received her MA from Ohio University and her MFA from The University of Virginia where she was a Hoyns Fellow.  The reading is free and open to the public.