Winona State University will host author Kim Roberts as part of the Great River Reading Series Oct. 23-24.

Roberts will give a public reading of poems from her book, Animal Magnetism, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23, in the Science Laboratory Center. She will also speak to Jim Armstrong’s Poetry class at noon Wednesday, Oct. 24, in Minne 350.

Roberts is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon On K. Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010). She is the author of three books of poems, Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011), The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1994), and the nonfiction chapbook Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word in DC (Beltway Editions, 2010). Roberts has been featured in numerous anthologies, including Letters to the World (Red Hen Press), American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (No Tell Books), and The First Yes: Poems About Communicating (Dryad Press).

Poems by Roberts have been set to music by an alternative rock band, Arc of Ones, and by classical composer Daron Hagen, and several have been choreographed by Jane Franklin Dance Company. Five of her plays have been produced or published.

Roberts is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission on the Arts, and the Humanities Council of Washington. She was winner of the 2010 Washington On-Line Award for contributions to the Washington, D.C., arts community and a 2008 Independent Voice Award from the Capital BookFest.

All class sessions and readings are free and open to the public.

For more information contact Myles Weber at MWeber@winona.edu.