Poet Laureate Brewer to Give Reading at USU in Honor of English Department

Ken Brewer, poet laureate of Utah, will give a benefit reading for the Adrienne Platero Creative Writing Award March 24 at the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium on the Utah State University campus at 7:30 p.m.

The award was established through an anonymous donation and other contributions in memory of Adrienne Platero, a former student in Utah State's English department, whose creative writing accomplishments were well known among faculty and students.

Platero died last November of leukemia while pursuing a master's degree in creative writing at Oregon State University. As a tribute to Platero, friends, teachers and colleagues hope to add enough funding to the original donation to award a cash prize each year to the overall winner of the annual USU English department's Creative Writing Contest. Platero's poetry won second place in the contest in 2000 and 2002, and her essay "Foreign Land" won first place in 2002. Her poems have been published in literary journals throughout the western states, including the English department's natural science and creative writing journal, "Petroglyph."

Brewer, Utah State emeritus professor, said he will read from Platero's work, the work of other Utah State poets and writers who are "no longer with us," and from his own work, donating his time to raise funds for the award.