Dr. Amy Wright

Poet, editor new Basler Chair at ETSU

Poet, editor and award-winning essayist Dr. Amy Wright is the Spring 2022 Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric and Science, a prestigious honor given by East Tennessee State University for nearly 30 years.

Wright coordinates the Creative Writing Program at Austin Peay State University, where she also teaches writing, and serves as the senior editor for the Zone 3 journal and the nonfiction editor for Zone 3 Press. Her accolades are long: two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, an Individual Artist Fellowship through Humanities Tennessee and a fellowship through the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Wright has read or led workshops nationally and internationally from Boulder, Colorado, to Reykjavík, Iceland, as well as the Savannah College of Art and Design, Massey University of New Zealand and the University of Denver, where she earned her doctorate.

“Yet if you ask Amy about her accomplishments, she will point to current and former students whose work has been published, or who have gone on to successful careers in editing, writing and education,” said Dr. Jesse Graves, a professor and poet-in-residence in theDepartment of Literature and Languageat ETSU. “She is looking forward to returning to the mountains to work with the students and community at ETSU.”

As the Basler Chair, Wright will teach two spring semester classes and make several public presentations:

• At 7 p.m.,Thursday, March 3, in Room 311 in the D.P. Culp Student Center, Wright will give a talk about asking great questions. Utilizing her experience as a journalist and researcher, she will discuss the craft of asking questions about science, nature, art, identity, class and gender.
• At 7 p.m., Monday, March 28, in Room 311 in the D.P. Culp Student Center, Wright will give a presentation that demonstrates ways to reimagine the mountains, stories and characters of Appalachia through the lens of the sublime and geologic time.
• At 3:45 p.m., Tuesday, April 12, at the Reece Museum, Wright will give a talk about interpreting Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Wright has read, published and shared dozens of prose translations of Dickinson poems. The talk is part of ETSU’s Spring Literary Festival.

Wright grew up on a dairy farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, the would-be seventh generation in her family to tend those foothills. Instead, she became an Appalachian writer who cultivated connections between nature and people in her work. In addition to “Paper Concert,” she has published three books of poetry, six chapbooks and over 180 individual poems, essays and interviews, including two science articles on which she is listed as a co-author.

Wright’s newest book, “Paper Concert,”embodies the integrative spirit of the Basler Chair appointment, the university said, drawing together in conversation artists, scientists, activists and humanists in a far-reaching dialogue that ranges from forest ecology to Appalachian quilt-making, with countless topics in between.

Established in 1994, the Basler Chair of Excellence is designed to help bridgethe gap in academia between the sciences, the arts and the humanities disciplines. The chair serves for one semester.