2007 U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, the author of eighteen collections of poetry, is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for his book of prose poems The World Doesn't End, and his 1996 collection, Walking the Black Cat, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. His most recent poetry volume is That Little Something (2008). Simic held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1984-1989, and has also held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. In 2007, the same day he was appointed Poet Laureate, Simic received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry."

This event was co-sponsored by the Department of English with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.