Poetry Reading Sheds Light on Creative Process

The dynamic process of writing is often shrouded in mystery. The creative energies writers pour into draft after draft, and the sources of their inspiration are not readily apparent in the finished product. Purchase College will pull back the curtain when poets Rachel M. Simon and Ronnie Scharfman read from and talk about their work on November 8, 4-5:30 pm at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, SUNY. The event, one of a series sponsored by the Purchase Writers Center, is free and open to the public.

“This is an exciting opportunity to showcase both established and emerging talent from high-caliber writers, a critical mission of the Writers Center,” said Louise Yelin, Chair of the School of Humanities and a literature professor at Purchase College. “This series at the Writers Center offers an inside view of the dynamic process of writing, as Center Fellows and others present their work in progress. We will highlight their accomplishments throughout the year.” The reading and reception featuring Simon and Scharfman  are co-sponsored by the Purchase Literature Society.

Rachel M. Simon is the author of two poetry collections, Theory of Orange, winner of the Pavement Saw Transcontinentel Award (2006), and Marginal Road. She teaches writing, gender studies, and film courses at Purchase College, Pace University, Poets House, and Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison. She is a 2011-2012 Purchase College Writers Center Fellow where she is now developing a new collection of poems on the subject of sports.

Ronnie Scharfman, an alumna of Bryn Mawr College, the University of Aix-en-Provence, and Yale University, is Professor Emerita of French and Literature at Purchase College. A distinguished scholar, Scharfman is the author of numerous scholarly works on prominent Francophone writers. Her book on Aimé Césaire, Engagement and the Language of the Subject in the Poetry of Aimé Césaire, won a Gilbert Chinard Literary Prize in 1987. She co-edited a special edition of Yale French Studies on “Post/Colonial Conditions” with Françoise Lionnet, and an anthology of French and Francophone women writers, Ecritures de Femmes. For 15 years, she has participated in poetry- and midrash-writing workshops with Alicia Ostriker and Charlotte Mandel. Her poetry appeared in summer 2011 in the Jewish Women's Literary Annual, vol. 8.  She is currently at work on a chapbook of her poems (as yet untitled). 

Launched in 2010, the Purchase College Writers Center is designed to nurture and showcase the broad range of high quality writing being produced at Purchase College, and serves as a focus for the college’s many activities involving writers and writing. It draws together writers from across Purchase College (including faculty in Creative Writing, Journalism, Literature, and Screen and Playwriting) and from the surrounding Westchester community. Each year, the Center hosts a group of fellows, local writers who are provided with offices and given access to the resources of the College so that they can pursue their own writing projects. Fellows also conduct workshops at the College and in the community, lead writing groups, and, along with other Purchase writers, read from their work, host public readings and other get-togethers, and participate in panel discussions. The Writers Center is supported by an Advisory Board composed of distinguished, internationally recognized writers and overseen by an Executive Committee of Purchase College faculty members. 

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) network of 64 universities and colleges, was founded in 1967 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His aspirations for Purchase were to combine on one campus conservatory training in the visual and performing arts with programs in the liberal arts and sciences. Today, Purchase College, SUNY is a community of students, faculty, and friends where open-minded engagement with the creative process leads to a lifetime of intellectual growth and professional opportunity. For more information about the College, visit www.purchase.edu.