The first Armfield Poetry Festival, featuring free public readings by four major prizewinning American poets, will be hosted by the Creative Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, Nov. 8-9.

Two poets will read each day, one in the afternoon at 3:30 and one in the evening at 7:30. All readings will be in the University Room of Hyde Hall at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, on Polk Place near the intersection of Franklin and Henderson Streets.

On Wednesday, Nov. 8, Kenneth Fields will read at 3:30 p.m. His collections of poetry include "Other Walker," "Sunbelly," and most recently "Classic Rough News" (2005), a collection of sonnets and sonnet-like lyrics that attest both to Fields' skills as a writer and to the inexhaustible possibilities of the form. A professor at Stanford for many years, Fields teaches the Advanced Poetry Workshop for the Writing Fellows.

On Wednesday evening, Nov. 8, Mark Doty -- poet, essayist, memoirist -- will read at 7:30 p.m. He is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently "School of the Arts" (2006), praised by one poet as "memorable, essential, big-hearted, joyous in music: the finest book of poems by one of our finest poets."

Doty has won many awards: the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction for "Heaven's Coast: A Memoir" (1996), a Lambda Literary Award for "Atlantis" (1995), and both the National Book Critics Circle Award for "My Alexandria" (1993). He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Houston.

On Thursday, Nov. 9, Marie Howe will read at 3:30 p.m. The first of her two books of poetry, "The Good Thief" (1988), won the National Poetry Series that year. The Boston Globe called her second collection, "What the Living Do" (1997), "a deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel." Howe has also co-edited the book of essays, "In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic" (1995). She lives and teaches in New York.

On Thursday evening, Nov. 9, C. K. Williams, winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for his collection "Repair," will read at 7:30 p.m. Besides his nine collections of poetry, he has also published a book of essays, a memoir, and translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Francis Ponge. He teaches at Princeton University.

This event is made possible by a generous gift from the late Blanche Britt Armfield (M.A., English, 1928) "to champion the cause of poetry on the UNC campus."

For over 20 years, leading American poets have been brought to Chapel Hill for semi-annual readings, among them Henry Taylor, Charles Wright, Marilyn Nelson, Andrew Hudgins, Erica Funkhouser, Robert Wrigley, Forest Hamer, and Kate Daniels. This is the first Armfield Poetry Festival featuring multiple readers.

For further information, contact festival coordinator Alan Shapiro, Kenan Professor of English, at 919-962-1994 or ashapiro@email.unc.edu, or Jenne Herbst, program assistant for Creative Writing, at 919-962-4000 or jlherbst@email.unc.edu, or Michael McFee, acting director of the Creative Writing Program, at 919-962-3461 or mcfee@unc.edu.