Exeter, NH (April 24, 2009)—On Tuesday, May 5, 2009, at 7:00 p.m., Phillips Exeter Academy will host a poetry reading by English Instructor Matt W. Miller and poet Ashley Capps. The reading will be held in the Kaplanoff Periodicals Room, located on the ground floor of the Academy Library on Front Street. A reception will follow. These events are free and open to the public.

Miller is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. He earned a B.A. in Psychology at Yale University, and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College. He is a former Visiting Professor of Writing at New England College and has taught writing workshops at several leading institutions, including Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts. He has published work in Notre Dame Review, Connecticut Review and PN Review, among others. Miller’s first book, Cameo Diner: Poems, was published in 2005 by Loom Press and nominated for five Pushcart Prizes. He has served as a visiting poet at the Pingree School, Middlesex Community College, and at the Jack Kerouac On the Road Scroll Celebration in Lowell, MA.

Ashley Capps received a B.A. in French and a B.A. in English Literature at Queens University, and completed her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2006. Her first book of poems, Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields, was selected by Gerald Stern for the Akron Poetry Prize and was published in 2006. She has held writing fellowships from the Wisconsin Writer’s Institute and the Iowa Arts Council.  Recent poems have appeared in Granta 100, Poetry London, Ploughshares, and in the “Poet’s Sampler” feature of Boston Review. At work on a second collection of poetry, Capps will begin a Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston in the fall of 2009. Earlier this year, she taught English at Phillips Exeter Academy, where she currently resides.

For further information, contact Jacquelyn H. Thomas, Academy Librarian at 603-777-3328 or visit the library’s website page. A complete list of upcoming events is available on the Phillips Exeter Academy public events line at 603-777-4309 and on our website’s news and events page. For directions, call 603-777-4330.