Award-winning Wisconsin poet reads at Ripon College

Award-winning Wisconsin poet Karla Huston will read from her newest books, “A Theory of Lipstick” and “Outside of a Dog,” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, in the North Reading Room of Lane Library on the Ripon College campus. The reading, which is free and open to all, will be followed by a chance to meet the poet and a book signing.

Huston is the winner of the 2003 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest. She earned her master’s degree in English and creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. She is the author of seven chapbooks of poetry. “Outside of a Dog” (dancing girl press & studio) and “A Theory of Lipstick” (Main Street Rag), both were published in 2013.

She also has published poetry, reviews and interviews in many state and national journals. The poem “Theory of Lipstick” was awarded a Pushcart Prize and appeared in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses (2012).

A retired teacher of high school English, Huston now teaches poetry-writing workshops at The Mill: A Place for Writers, in Appleton, Wis., and frequently gives readings around the state.

Poet Phil Dacey writes about Huston’s work that it “is both brainy and sensuous, and the whole is underwritten by a musical ear attuned to the American idiom at its jazziest.” Katie Giorgio notes that “the most wonderful thing about Karla Huston’s poetry is accessibility. The reader doesn’t have to be a poet, an academic or an intellectual to be able to appreciate it.” Susan Firer calls Huston’s poems “generous with the pleasures of poetry.”

Huston’s visit is sponsored by the Ripon College Visiting Writers Series and Lane Library, with assistance from the Schang Family Visiting Writer Fund. For more information, contact David Graham, Department of English, at 748-8722.