The Smartish Pace Reading Series continues with award-winning poet Campbell McGrath reading from his new collection, In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys, followed by a Q&A. Piotr Gwiazda will be opening for McGrath, reading from his new book, Messages: Poems and Interview. Over the past twelve years the Baltimore-based Smartish Pace magazine has published more than 700 poets, including a dozen Pulitzer Prize winners and hosted 75 poetry readings.

About the Speakers
McGrath is the author of ten books of poetry, including Spring Comes to Chicago, Florida Poems, Seven Notebooks, and most recently In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys (Ecco Press, 2012).  He has received many of America’s major literary prizes for his work, including the Kingsley Tufts Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship, and a Witter-Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. Born in Washington, DC, he lives with his family in Miami Beach and teaches at Florida International University.

Gwiazda is the author of two books of poetry, Messages: Poems & Interview (Pond Road, 2012) and Gagarin Street (WWPH, 2005), as well as James Merrill and W.H. Auden: Homosexuality and Poetic Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He was Writer-in-Residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut, in the fall of 2008. Gwiazda teaches modern and contemporary poetry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.