Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Series

In the Spirit of Room 222

In the late 1950s, Robert Lowell led a workshop whose students included three younger writers: George Starbuck, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath. This legendary group gathered in the same small, corner classroom where our creative writing workshops continue to meet. The Robert Lowell Memorial Lectures celebrate this legacy, and the thriving community of writers, teachers and students at Boston University, by bringing a distinguished poet to campus each semester to read alongside a recent graduate of the program.

The Robert Lowell Memorial Reading series is made possible due to the generous support of Fred Levin and his late wife Nancy Livingston (COM ’69). Thanks to Fred’s continuing support, the Lowell Memorial Reading Series takes place twice a year as it has since 2004.

The Fall 2024 Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture

Featuring Monica Youn and Sara Daniele Rivera

Thursday, November 7th at 7:30PM in the Boston University Hillel House River Room (4th Floor)

(Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan)

Monica Youn is the author of four poetry collections, most recently FROM FROM (Graywolf Press 2023), which was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and Best Poetry Book of 2023. Her books have twice been shortlisted for the National Book Award, as well as being finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Voelcker Prize, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. She has also been awarded the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bytter Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a Stegner Fellowship. A former constitutional lawyer, she is a member of the curatorial collective the Racial Imaginary Institute and is an associate professor of English at UC Irvine.

(Photo credit: Eliade Novat)

Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban Peruvian American artist, writer, translator, and educator. Her writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Solstice, Waxwing, and elsewhere. Her debut book of poetry, The Blue Mimes, won the 2023 Academy of American Poets First Book Award and is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Read below to see who has read for the Lowell series in the past!