Day 4: Conversation with the Artist

Tonight's conversation was with poet George Bilgere.

George Bilgere's recent books are The Good Kiss (University of Akron Press, 2002), and Haywire (Utah State University Press), which won the May Swenson Poetry Award in 2006. He is the author of two other books of poetry, The Going (University of Missouri, 1995) and Big Bang (Copper Beech Press, 1999). The Going received both the Devins Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. His poems appear regularly in such journals as Poetry, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Field, and New England Review. He has been featured in Best American Poetry in 1999 and 2002. Radio host Garrison Keillor has read Bilgere's poems on a number of occasions on NPR's "The Writer's Almanac." Bilgere has given readings at the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y in New York, and at colleges and public institutions around the country. He directs the creative writing program at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.