April is National Poetry Month, and in honor of that the West Virginia University Press is gearing up for its forthcoming release of Vivid Companion: Poems by West Virginia’s Poet Laureate Irene McKinney. Vivid Companion will be McKinney’s fifth published book of poetry.

Growing up in the small town of Belington, she received her bachelor of arts degree at West Virginia Wesleyan College, continued her education at WVU , and later received her doctorate from University of Utah. She is currently the director of creative writing and an associate professor at West Virginia Wesleyan.

Appointed poet laureate of West Virginia in 1993, McKinney is also the recipient of many other awards including the Utah Arts Council Prize Award in Fiction, the Breadloaf Scholarship, the Cincinnati Review Annual Poetry Prize, the Kentucky Foundation for Women Award, the Appalachian Mellon Fellowship from the University of Virginia and the MacDowell Fellowship. In addition, she is the co-founder and editor of Trellis , a West Virginia poetry magazine.

Mckinney’s previous collections of poetry include the Six O’Clock Mine Report , Quick Fire and Slow Fire , The Wasps at the Blue Hexagons and The Girl With the Stone in Her Lap . Along with her four books, McKinney has had poems published in journals and magazines such as Appalachian Heritage, Quarterly West, Southern Poetry Review , and Trellis . McKinney also edited and wrote the introduction to the 2002 Vandalia Press book Backcountry: Contemporary Writing in West Virginia.

Vivid Companion is scheduled to be released in August. For more information on this or other titles published by the West Virginia University Press visit www.wvupress.com or call 304-293-8400.