Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

National Book Critics Circle Award winner B.H. Fairchild speaks at Syracuse Symposium Nov. 14

Thursday, November 1, 2012, By Rob Enslin
Share
College of Arts and SciencesEventsspeakersSyracuse Symposium

fairchildSyracuse Symposium continues its fall theme of “Memory-Media-Archive” with a special reading by poet B. H. Fairchild. Winner of the prestigious National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award, Fairchild will speak at the Downtown Syracuse YMCA (340 Montgomery St.) on Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. For more information, call 315-443-7192 or visit syracusehumanities.org. 

Fairchild’s reading is sponsored by the Downtown Writer’s Center (DWC) of the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse and by the SU Humanities Center, which organizes and presents Syracuse Symposium for The College of Arts and Sciences and campus community.

“We are proud to partner with the Downtown Writer’s Center to present B.H. Fairchild, known for his moving portrayals of working-class Midwestern communities,” says Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and founding director of the SU Humanities Center. “His poems provide powerful insight into an America that is often overlooked in our modern storytelling.”

Phil Memmer, DWC founder and executive director of the Y Arts Branch, agrees: “Whether it captures a single fleeting moment or a generation’s Zeitgeist, Fairchild’s work preserves how it feels to be human.”

Fairchild is the author of six volumes of poetry, including “Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), winner of the NBCC Award, the California Book Award and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; and “The Art of the Lathe” (Alice James Books, 1997), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Fairchild also won Pushcart prizes in 2009 and 2012.

The son of a lathe operator, Fairchild has written extensively about the desolate beauty of his native Kansas and Texas. Much of his work lies at the intersection of physical labor and memory, as explained in an interview with Boston College professor Paul Mariani: “Very often, especially in my later teens and early 20s, I was existing in both worlds at the same time, watching a welder lay down a perfect seam while ‘Madame Bovary’ was walking around in my head, or observing the gleam of a freshly shaped and honed piece of stock while remembering the arc of a Brancusi sculpture.”

Fairchild, whose American aesthetic has been compared to William Carlos Williams’, James Wright’s and James Dickey’s, is a professor of English at the University of North Texas.

 

  • Author

Rob Enslin

  • Recent
  • Syracuse Stage Hosts Inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival
    Wednesday, May 28, 2025, By News Staff
  • Timur Hammond’s ‘Placing Islam’ Receives Journal’s Honorable Mention
    Tuesday, May 27, 2025, By News Staff
  • Expert Available to Discuss DOD Acceptance of Qatari Jet
    Thursday, May 22, 2025, By Vanessa Marquette
  • Syracuse University 2025-26 Budget to Include Significant Expansion of Student Financial Aid
    Wednesday, May 21, 2025, By News Staff
  • Light Work Opens New Exhibitions
    Wednesday, May 21, 2025, By News Staff

More In Arts & Culture

Syracuse Stage Hosts Inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival

Syracuse Stage is pleased to announce that the inaugural Julie Lutz New Play Festival will be held at the theatre this June. Formerly known as the Cold Read Festival of New Plays, the festival will feature a work-in-progress reading and…

Light Work Opens New Exhibitions

Light Work has two new exhibitions, “The Archive as Liberation” and “2025 Light Work Grants in Photography, that will run through Aug. 29. “The Archive as Liberation” The exhibition is on display in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light…

Spelman College Glee Club to Perform at Return to Community: A Sunday Gospel Jazz Service June 29

As the grand finale of the 2025 Syracuse International Jazz Fest, the Spelman College Glee Club of Atlanta will perform at Hendricks Chapel on Sunday, June 29. The Spelman College Glee Club, now in its historic 100th year, is the…

Alumnus, Visiting Scholar Mosab Abu Toha G’23 Wins Pulitzer Prize for New Yorker Essays

Mosab Abu Toha G’23, a graduate of the M.F.A. program in creative writing in the College of Arts and Sciences and a current visiting scholar at Syracuse University, has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays…

School of Architecture Faculty Pablo Sequero Named Winner of 2025 Architectural League Prize

School of Architecture faculty member Pablo Sequero’s firm, salazarsequeromedina, has been named to the newest cohort of winners in the biennial Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, one of North America’s most prestigious awards for young practitioners. “An…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.