NORFOLK – Area writers will speak as part of the Visiting Writers Series at Northeast Community College in Norfolk.

Neil Harrison, Norfolk, and Jim Reese, Yankton, will read their works on Wednesday, November 12, at
7 p.m., in Hawks Landing in the Northeast Student Center.

Harrison has worked as a yardman and a night chute-man at the (then) world’s-largest livestock auction, as a feedlot worker, construction worker, house painter, machine-gunner in the 325th Airborne Infantry, casket bearer in Arlington National Cemetery as a member of the 3rd U.S. Infantry, farm and ranch hand, block layer’s assistant, gas station attendant, plumber’s assistant, masonry crew worker, postal clerk, and English instructor, with various episodes of schooling scattered throughout.

His poetry collections are Story (Logan House 1995 & 1996), In a River of Wind (Bridge Burner’s 2000), Into the River Canyon at Dusk (Lone Willow 2005), andBack in the Animal Kingdom (Pinyon Publishing 2011).  His stories and poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies.

In 2013, Harrison retired from Northeast Community College, where he taught English and Creative Writing and coordinated the Visiting Writers Series.

Reese is an associate professor of English; director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty College in Yankton, SD; and editor-in-chief ofPADDLEFISH.

His poetry and prose have been widely published, most recently in New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Paterson Literary Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Connecticut Review, and elsewhere. His book ghost on 3rd was a Finalist for the 2010 Milt Kessler Poetry Award. Other recent awards include a 2012 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and a 2012 Distinguished Public Service Award in recognition of Reese’s exemplary dedication and contributions to the Education Department at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp.

Since 2008, Reese has been one of six artists-in-residence throughout the country who are part of the National Endowment for the Art’s interagency initiative with the Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Prisons. His book Really Happy was just published by New York Quarterly Books in 2014.Reese and his family live in southern South Dakota, near John Wesley Powell’s one hundredth meridian — better than most determinants for where the American West begins.

The Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by the Northeast Community College English Department.  All events are free and open to the public.  For further information contact Bonnie Johnson-Bartee, coordinator, at (402) 844-7673.