Lunch With Books: Poetry with Marc Harshman

May 14, 2024
12:00pm - 1:00pm

In “Following the Silence,” Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia, offers up his newest full-length collection of poems and demonstrates his dependably keen observational skills that elevate landscapes and people into an almost mythic realm. In many of the poems there is, as well, a threatening presence from whose grim circumstances he wrestles, if not hope, glimmers of its possibilities. 

BIO - Marc Harshman is the author of 14 nationally acclaimed children’s books including FALLINGWATER: THE BUILDING OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S MASTERPIECE, co-authored with Anna Egan Smucker. His collections of poetry include WOMAN IN RED ANORAK, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize, BELIEVE WHAT YOU CAN, winner of the Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association [WVU Press], DARK HILLS OF HOME, [Monongahela Books, 2022], and his newest volume just released and from which he’ll be reading at OCPL is FOLLOWING THE SILENCE, Press 53, Winston-Salem, NC.  He has also just been named the Appalachian Heritage Writer for 2024 by Shepherd University’s Appalachian Studies program.  He holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale University Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh.  Appointed in 2012 by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, Harshman is the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia.