Monday, September 23, 2002


CONTACT: Jordana Rich, (706) 542-2659, jrich@parallel.park.uga.edu

MUSICIAN VIC CHESNUTT AND POET FORREST GANDER TO GIVE PERFORMANCE AND READING AT UGA ON OCTOBER 4

ATHENS, Ga. — Songwriter Vic Chesnutt and poet Forrest Gander will perform together on Oct. 4 at 4 p.m. in the University of Georgia Chapel. The performance is sponsored by UGA’s Creative Writing Program and is free and open to the public. The event will include a poetry reading by Gander and a musical performance by Chesnutt followed by a collaboration between the two artists.

Chesnutt has recorded a number of albums, most recently "Left to His Own Devices" (2001) and "Merriment" (2000) and is a member of the band Brute, which also includes members of Widespread Panic. He is well known for his songs about small-town life and autobiographical expressions of his injury — a drunk-driving accident in 1983 that left him partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Chesnutt has toured with and influenced such artists as Bob Mould, Kristen Hersh, Wilco, Soul Asylum, Goo-Goo Dolls, Live, Victoria Williams, Giant Sand, Calexico and Lambchop.

Gander is the director of the Creative Writing Program at Brown University and is the author of six poetry books, most recently Tom Awake and Science & Steepleflower. He is the editor of Mouth to Mouth: Poems by 12 Contemporary Mexican Women and the translator of No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome and (with Kent Johnson) Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz. He has received a number of awards including the Whiting Award for Writers and the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative North American Poetry.

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