September 18, 2002 SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) - The Writers' Institute at Susquehanna University will host a reading by Rodney Jones, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Seibert Hall's Isaacs Auditorium. The reading is free and open to the public. Jones is the author of seven books of poetry, including the prize-winning Transparent Gestures, The Story of Light They Told Us, The Unborn, Apocalyptic Narrative and Other Poems, Things That Happen Once, and most recently The Kingdom of an Instant. Jones' collection Elegy for the Southern Drawl was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It was also the winner of the 2000 Southeast Booksellers Association Award for Poetry. Jones has been honored with the Jean Stein Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, the Haynes Award of the Southern Fellowship of Authors, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Pushcart prize. Besides being featured in five annual editions of The Best American Poetry, Jones' poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, and The Southern Review. A graduate of the University of Alabama and the fine arts program at the University of North Carolina, Jones is currently a professor of English at Southern Illinois University. Jones is the second of six writers scheduled to read at Susquehanna during the 2002-2003 school year as part of the Visiting Writers Series sponsored by The Writers' Institute. On October 24, fiction writer Jayne Anne Phillips will visit the university. This reading is partially sponsored by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk/0194#