HWS News
15 September 2026 • Humanities Acclaimed Poets Headline Trias Reading Series
Trias Writer-in-Residence Dan Beachy-Quick opens a fall series featuring National Book Award finalist Ann Lauterbach and T.S. Eliot Prize winner Peter Gizzi.
Three acclaimed American poets bring their work to Hobart and William Smith this fall in the Trias Reading Series, beginning with 2026-27 Trias Writer-in-Residence Dan Beachy-Quick on Thursday evening, Sept. 17.
Two readings will follow in October and November with poet and essayist Ann Lauterbach on Thursday, Oct. 8 and poet and editor Peter Gizzi on Thursday, Nov. 5.
Each event begins at 7 p.m. in the Blackwell Room of Demarest Hall.
“This fall, we have one of our best Trias Reading Series lineups ever, with three poets who are deeply important to American letters coming to read on our campus,” says Professor of English and creative writing Kathryn Cowles, director of the Trias Writer’s Residency.
Established through a bequest from Peter J. Trias ’70, the Peter Trias Endowed Fund for Poetry and Creative Writing invites a nationally renowned writer each year to live in the Trias House, teach a creative writing workshop to student writers and lead a spring intensive tutorial.
As Trias Writer-in-Residence, Beachy-Quick also gives a public reading and curates the Trias Reading Series. Past visiting readers have included winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize and MacArthur Fellowship.
Beachy-Quick’s work has received support from the Monfort, Lannan and Guggenheim foundations and has been longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry. He is a poet, essayist and translator whose most recent book, Elements & Offerings, was published last year. He has authored 15 books of poetry and essays and translated three books from the Greek.
For his philosophical approach to themes such as consciousness, Poet Brian Teare has described Beachy-Quick as “a true American metaphysical in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Susan Howe.” Of his 2019 book Variations on Dawn and Dusk, an ekphrastic work inspired by artist Robert Irwin's architectural installation Untitled (Dawn to Dusk) in Marfa, Texas, Teare describes Beachy-Quick’s collection as a display of his “preternatural attunement to thought at the moment it turns inward upon itself.”
When he’s not on residency, Beachy-Quick teaches in the MFA program at Colorado State University.
On Oct. 8 Lauterbach will read from her latest collection Door, in which the recurring image of a door is used to explore the boundaries between memory, imagination and the world outside.
Writing in Colorado Review, Claire Marie Stancek describes Lauterbach’s Door as opening onto “mythic dreamscapes and echoic worlds of vibrant sound,” with the recurring image of a door leading readers through shifting perceptions, memories and meanings.
The author of 11 books of poetry and three collections of essays, Lauterbach’s 2009 poetry collection, Or To Begin Again, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has been recognized with Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, among other honors. She is the Ruth and David Schwab II Professor of Languages and Literatures at Bard College.
On Nov. 5. Gizzi will read from his most recent work Fierce Elegy, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and Massachusetts Book Award.
Writing in Harvard Review, James O’Connor describes Fierce Elegy as an “ongoing sense of loss coupled with resistance,” written in a humble, meditative voice that at times swerves to rage and ecstatic affirmation of pain.
The author of 11 books of poetry, Gizzi’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Fund for Poetry and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Top: Trias Writer-in-Residence Dan Beachy-Quick
