Poet Jake Adam York of Denver, Colo., will present a reading on Monday, March 5 at 5 p.m. as part of Coastal Carolina University's "The Words to Say It" visiting writers series. The free event will be held in the Recital Hall of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts on Coastal's Conway campus.

A reception and book signing will follow the reading.

York, who wrote "Murder Ballads" (2005), is an associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Colorado at Denver, where he directs an undergraduate creative writing program and produces the journal Copper Nickel with his students. He is also a contributing editor for Shenandoah, a co-editor of the online journal storySouth, and a founding editor of Thicket, an electronic journal dedicated to Alabama writers and Alabama writing.

"Murmur," his chapbook of recent poems, was named the winner of the 2006 Poetry West Chapbook Competition and will be published in coming months. His poems and essays have appeared in The Oxford American, The Greensboro Review, New Orleans Review, Quarterly West, The Southern Review and others. He is also the author of "The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry," a history published in 2005.

York was raised in northeast Alabama and earned degrees from Auburn and Cornell universities.

For more information contact Dan Albergotti at (843) 349-2420.