Poet Brian Turner will read from his award-winning poetry Thursday, Feb. 7 at 4:30 p.m. in the Wall Auditorium at Coastal Carolina University. The event is free and open to the public.

The reading is part of the Words to Say It Visiting Writers Series sponsored by the Department of English.

Turner served in the U.S. Army for seven years and toured Iraq for one year as an infantry team leader with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. He lived in South Korea for a year and has earned an MFA from the University of Oregon.

The soldier-poet's writing has earned seven awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry award for 2007. His poem "Here, Bullet" was a New York Times Editor's Choice Selection, and his debut book of poems won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award. His work has been published in several journals including Poetry Daily, the Georgia Review and others, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology.

For more information, call Dan Albergotti, coordinator of the series, at 349-2420.