Piper Writers House to host award-winning poet, ASU alum Eduardo C. Corral

Poet Eduardo C. Corral, a recipient of the prestigious Whiting Writers’ Award and the Yale Younger Poets prize, will read from his recently-released collection “Slow Lightning” at 7:45 p.m., April 10, at the Piper Writers House on the ASU Tempe campus.

The event, sponsored by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, is free and open to the public. Attendees can purchase “Slow Lightning” at the event through Sun Devil Bookstores.

The manuscript for “Slow Lightning,” Corral’s first collection of poems, was selected by critically acclaimed poet Carl Phillips as winner of the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Awarded since 1919, the Yale Younger Poets prize is the oldest annual literary award in the United States. Corral is the first Latino to ever win this prestigious award.

Corral’s work started gaining attention in 2005 when he won the :Discovery”/the Nation Award, which is designed to attract large audiences to poets who have not yet published a book of poems.

A native of Casa Grande, Ariz., Corral has served creative writing fellowships at Colgate University and Bucknell University, and recently was an artist-in-residence at both Yaddo in Sarasota Springs, N.Y. and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

Corral was in Uruguay this fall as part of an international-writers program run by the University of Iowa when the Whiting Foundation informed him that he had been selected for a Whiting Writers’ Award. With it came $50,000 and recognition as one of the nation’s most promising and talented writers.

Corral holds degrees from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest and Quarterly West.

For more information about the event call the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at (480) 965-6018, or go to asu.edu/piper/index.html.

About the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing

Established in 2003, The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing is a non-academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. The Center brings the nation’s best writers to the Phoenix area throughout the year for numerous workshops and readings, fostering a thriving creative and literary community to enhance the region’s cultural environment. The Center is also committed to elevating ASU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing to national and international prominence by providing resources and support to its students and faculty. The Center is also home to Hayden’s Ferry Review, ASU’s acclaimed literary journal, and the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference.