The Montgomery County Literary Arts Council will kick off its fall season with 2026 Texas State Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Kevin Prufer.
The reading and book signing will be on Thursday, September 18th, at Lone Star College Montgomery, room B-102 at 7:00 pm; the event is free to the public.
Kevin Prufer’s newest poetry collection is The Fears, winner of the 2024 Rilke Prize. His new novel, Sleepaway was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Book of Fiction. Other books of poetry, including The Art of Fiction, How He Loved Them, Churches, In a Beautiful Country, and National Anthem, all from Four Way Books.
He’s edited several volumes of poetry, including New European Poets; w/ Wayne Miller, Literary Publishing in the 21st Century; w/ Wayne Miller & Travis Kurowski), and Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries; w/Martha Collins).
With Wayne Miller and Martin Rock, Prufer directs the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing the work of great but little-known authors to new generations of readers through the annual republication of a large body of each author’s work, printed alongside essays, photographs, and ephemera. Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.
Among Prufer’s awards and honors are many Pushcart prizes and Best American Poetry selections, numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. His poetry collection How He Loved Them was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book of 2018 from the American Literary Press. Born in 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio, Kevin Prufer studied at Wesleyan University (BA), Hollins College (MA) and Washington University (MFA).
For more information, contact Dave Parsons, 936.524.6537 or Cliff Hudder, Clifford.w.hudder@lonestar.edu.