September 19, 2005—Oberlin College's creative writing program will present Thomas Sayers Ellis - "a new and original voice in American poetry" ( Midwest Review) - in a free, public reading Thursday, September 29 at 4:45 p.m.

The reading is the first creative writing program event of the year, and will be held in Room 106 of the College's King Building, located at10 N. Professor St.

Ellis's new collection, The Maverick Room, is "marked by inner-city youth culture energy that is part lyrical narrative, part 'Parliament Funkadelic', " says the Review, "a blend of chaos and control through the sheer and simple power of words."

Ellis is the co-founder of The Dark Room Collective, a gathering place for young African American poets and an associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. His work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and he is currently compiling and editing Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets.

His chapbook, The Genuine Negro Hero, was published by Kent State University Press in 2001, and his collection of poems, The Good Junk, was published as a part of Graywolf Press's Take Three: I series in 1996. In 1993 he co edited On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists. Ellis also is a contributing editor of Callaloo and a faculty member of the Lesley University low-residency MFA program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The poet has received fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center (in Provincetown, Massachusetts), and Yaddo. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and received an MFA degree from Brown University in 1995.

The creative writing program's next event will be a reading by poet Marilyn Chin on Wednesday, November 30.