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D. Nurkse will be the featured poet at this year's Allen Neff Memorial Poetry Reading to be held on the campus of Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. The reading will take place Thursday, October 30 at 5 p.m. in the Recital Hall at the Doudna Fine Arts Center. D. Nurkse is the author of 10 books of poetry, including his latest works, "A Night in Brooklyn," "The Border Kingdom," "Burnt Island," and "The Fall," from Alfred Knopf. He is the recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships, the Whiting Writers Award, and prizes from The Poetry Foundation and the Tanne Foundation.

From 1996 to 2001, he served as poet laureate of Brooklyn, and Bold Type Magazine has characterized Nurkse as "a poet long admired in the smoky biosphere of the New York poetry scene." Nurkse currently teaches courses in the Master of Fine Arts Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He has also taught poetry at MFA programs at other institutions, worked for human rights organizations, and served on the board of directors of Amnesty International USA from 2007 to 2010. As a teacher and writer, Allen Neff introduced hundreds of EIU students to the joys of creative writing. He was a member of the Department of English from 1967 to 1977, until his death at age 47.

The Allen Neff Memorial Fund was established by the Department of English in cooperation with the EIU Foundation in order to establish a continuing series of readings and lectures by major writers from across the country. The fund has brought writers to EIU's campus every year since 1984. The Allen Neff Memorial Poetry Reading is sponsored by the EIU Department of English. The public is welcome to attend the free event.

For more information on the Allen Neff Memorial Poetry Reading, contact the Department of English at 217-581-2428 or visit www.eiu.edu/english. Additional information about D. Nurkse is available at www.dnurkse.net.