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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Book Launch & Birthday Reading: Robyn Rowland and Susan Millar DuMars

A powerful reading by two women poets in their prime, followed by a Q&A. Dr. Robyn Rowland unveils her brand new book, Seasons Of Doubt And Burning: New and Selected, covering almost 40 years of publication. Susan Millar DuMars reads from Dreams for Breakfast, published in April 2010 and celebrates her 44th birthday.

Poet Celeste Auge (The Essential Guide To Flight) hosts and leads a question and answer session. Admission free. All welcome. Please come and join our celebrations.

Dr Robyn Rowland AO has published twelve books, nine of them poetry. Her work has been awarded a number of prizes, including the Catalpa Poetry Prize and overall Writers Prize from the Australian-Irish Heritage Association, and the Jean Stone Poetry Prize. Silence & its tongues (2006) was shortlisted for the 2007 ACT Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Third generation Irish-Australian, Robyn has been reading and teaching in Ireland for 28 years, where she lives part-time in Connemara. She has read her poetry in Portugal, Ireland, the UK, the USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy, where, along with Canada and Japan, she has also been published. Her poetry has been featured often on Australian national radio programs PoeticA and The Spirit of Things. Robyn is known for her moving readings, available on her CDs, Off the tongue and Silver Leaving - Poems & Harp.

Robyn's collection Seasons of doubt & burning: New & Selected Poems covering almost 40 years of publishing, will be launched in September 2010. Robyn, an Honorary Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, was Deputy Chair of the Board, Australian Poetry Centre (2007-2008); and Professor of Social Inquiry and Women’s Studies at Deakin University (1981–1996), retiring in 1996 with breast cancer and burnout. She was made an Officer in the Order of Australia for her contribution to higher education and women’s health in 1996.

Susan Millar DuMars’ debut poetry collection, Big Pink Umbrella, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. Her next collection, Dreams for Breakfast, appeared in April 2010. Her work features in Landing Places, Dedalus’ 2010 anthology of immigrant poetry written in Ireland; and also in The Best Of Irish Poetry 2010. A fiction writer as well, she published a collection of short stories, American Girls, with Lapwing in 2007. She has been the recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary. Susan teaches creative writing to adults and to groups with special needs. She lives in Galway, where she and her husband have run the Over the Edge readings series since 2003.