WASHINGTON, PA (Sept. 21, 2021) – Poet Caitlin Doyle, Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Writer-In-Residence at Washington & Jefferson College, will give a reading of her works Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in the Media Room on the lower level of Rossin Campus Center. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session.
Doyle is a poet, essayist, critic, and librettist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Yale Review, Best New Poets, the PBS NewsHour Online Poetry Series, and American Life in Poetry, among other outlets.
“In my writing, I am compelled to uncover the strangeness that lives within the seemingly ordinary,” Doyle says. “I strive to create poems that are rooted in refrain, echo, and incantation. My ambition is to reconnect readers with the ear-delight of their early years while feeding their grown-up appetites for emotional resonance, conceptual complexity, and intellectual depth.”
Doyle’s writing has been widely lauded. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has praised her poetry as “haunting and memorable” and highlighted it “as a fine example of strategic artistry, as if her words have been carefully held back until they burst into light at just the right moment.”
Robert Pinsky, another former U.S. Poet Laureate, has described Doyle as a poet with a “gorgeous, original imagination.” Doyle has been profiled in The Irish Echo as a “rising star in American Poetry,” and Michelle Aldredge of Gwarlingo has written the following about her writing: “Doyle’s poems are serious and complex, but also witty and playful, and it’s this tension that makes her work so innovative.”
“She shares Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner’s Southern-gothic flair. The Bronte Sisters, Isak Dinesen’s tales, and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” also spring to mind, for in Doyle’s modern-day rhymes, there are most certainly goblins lurking in the forest and madwomen hiding in the attic,” Aldredge writes.
Doyle has received awards, scholarships, and fellowships through the Yaddo Colony, the MacDowell Colony, the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, & Writers, the James Merrill House Writer-In-Residence Program, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Kerouac House Writer-In-Residence Program, among other organizations, and she has been honored as a P.E.O Presidential Endowed Scholar.
Prior to her work at W&J College, Doyle taught as the Writer-In-Residence at Interlochen Arts Academy, the Emerging Writer-In-Residence at Penn State Altoona, the George Starbuck Fellow in Poetry at Boston University, and the Writer-In-Residence at St. Albans School. Doyle earned a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati, where she taught writing and literature as the Elliston Fellow in Poetry and served as Associate Editor of The Cincinnati Review. She is a faculty member at the Frost Farm Summer Poetry Conference.
At W&J College Doyle teaches a range of courses in literature, creative writing, and expository writing. Her teaching interests include poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, hybrid literary forms, diasporic literature, and film studies. Doyle has won numerous awards for her teaching, including the University of Cincinnati Excellence in Teaching Award, the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences Teaching award, and a William C. Boyce Teaching Award.
The reading is free and open to the public. At this time, W&J College requires that masks be worn inside all campus buildings.
About Washington & Jefferson College
Washington & Jefferson College, proudly located in Washington, Pa., is a historic liberal arts college founded in 1781 that values ethical leadership, professional readiness, and inclusive communities. Our highly customized and intellectually engaging student experience develops professionals of uncommon integrity to lead in an ever-changing world. For more information about W&J, visit washjeff.dev, or call 888-W-AND-JAY.
