University of Iowa News Release

Oct. 19, 2004

Pakistani Poet, Scholar Hashmi To Read Oct. 29

Pakistani poet and scholar Alamgir Hashmi will read from his work at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, in Shambaugh House, the headquarters of the University of Iowa International Writing Program (IWP). The reading, presented by the IWP and International Programs, is free and the public is invited to attend.

Hashmi is widely considered to be one of the major English-language poets of the last half-century, and he is also a leading contributor internationally to literary theory, criticism and cross-cultural studies. He began a quarter-century ago to address the cultural clashes that have come in recent years to dominate world affairs, and to suggest principles for humane co-existence.

The author of more than a dozen books, he won the poetry prize in the All-Pakistan Creative Writing Contest in 1972 and the Patras Bokhari Award (National Literature Prize) of the Pakistan Academy of Letters in 1985, becoming the first English-language writer to be honored. He is also widely published abroad -- in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

Hashmi is the author of several scholarly books, and he has been professor of English and comparative literature in Pakistan, Europe and the United States. He was a judge of the Commonwealth Writers Prize 1990 and a member of the 1996 jury for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Shambaugh House, the headquarters of the IWP, is located 430 N. Clinton Street, at the corner of Clinton and Fairchild Streets on the UI campus.

For UI arts information and calendar updates, visit http://www.uiowa.edu/artsiowa. To receive UI arts news by e-mail, ur-acr@uiowa.edu.

STORY SOURCE: University of Iowa Arts Center Relations, 300 Plaza Centre One, Suite 351, Iowa City, IA 52242-2500.

MEDIA CONTACT: Winston Barclay, 319-384-0073, winston-barclay@uiowa.edu.