Not only is Michael Blumenthal the visiting Copenhaver Chair of West Virginia Universitys College of Law, but he is also an accomplished poet, novelist and essayist.

Blumenthal will present his seventh book of poems,And,at 7:30 p.m. April 6 at the WVU Library Robinson Reading Room. The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.

Michael Blumenthal can address the vast complexities of history and the intimate specifics of everyday life beautifully in just about any genre,said James Harms, interim director of WVU s creative writing program who has been reading Blumenthals work for more than 20 years.

Blumenthals works include the memoirAll My Mothers and Fathers,Dusty Angel,a book of poems; novels likeWeinstock Among The Dying,which won Hadassah Magazines Harold U. Ribelow Prize for the best work of Jewish fiction; andWhen History Enters the House,a collection of essays.

In addition, he is a contributing writer to The New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, the Harvard Review, Paris Review and the Norton Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.

He also spent a month in South Africa working with orphaned infant chacma baboons at the C.A.R.E. foundation in Phalaborwa, an experience he wrote about for Natural History and The Washington Post Magazine.

A graduate of Cornell Law School, Blumenthal is the former director of creative writing at Harvard University.

The reading is sponsored by the Department of English and the Council of Writers, an organization for WVU Master of Fine Arts in writing graduate students in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, contact Harms at 304-293-9720 or ” James.Harms@mail.wvu.edu rel=nofollow> James.Harms@mail.wvu.edu .