Nonfiction writer and poet Lori Jakiela will speak at 5 p.m. Feb. 20 in the University Art Gallery as part of Clarion University’s 2017-2018 Spoken Arts Series. Sponsored by the department of English and modern languages, the event is free and open to the public.
Jakiela is the author of memoirs "Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe" which received
the 2016 Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was
a finalist for the Council of Literary Magazine and Small Presses Firecracker Award
and the Housatonic Literary Award and named one of "20 Not-to-Miss Books of Nonfiction
of 2015" by Huffington Post.
She is author of the essay collection "Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker" and
two other memoirs, "Miss New York Has Everything" and "The Bridge to Take When Things
Get Serious." She is also author of the poetry collection "Spot the Terrorist and
several limited edition chapbooks. Her latest poetry chapbook, "Big Fish," was published
by Stranded Oak Press in 2016.
Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Rumpus, Brevity and more. She received a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, was a working scholar at The Bread Loaf Writers Conference and was the winner of the first Pittsburgh Literary Death Match.