WATCH: Copper Canyon’s Launch Party Livestream

Welcome to the final installment of Copper Canyon Press’s weekly series of free livestreaming book launch readings in the month of April. The Launch Party Livestream series introduced you to twelve brilliant new and forthcoming poetry collections—three Thursday readings, plus our Tuesday finale, beamed right to you at home. Today’s finale features James Richardson, Heather McHugh, and Sarah Ruhl. Watch the first three episodes here.

THE POETS:

James Richardson
James Richardson’s recent collections include During (Copper Canyon, 2016), which received the the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award as the best book in progress; By the Numbers: Poems and Aphorisms (Copper Canyon, 2010), a Publishers Weekly “Best Book of 2010” and a finalist for the National Book Award; Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms (Copper Canyon, 2004), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays (Copper Canyon, 2001). Richardson’s poems, microlyrics, aphorisms, and ten-second essays appear in The New Yorker, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, AGNI, The Yale Review, Poetry Daily, Great American Prose Poems, and Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists. His work also appears in Short Flights, Short Circuits: Aphorisms, Fragments and Literary Anomalies, and several Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Born in Florida and raised in the suburbs of New York, he has taught at the University of Virginia, Harvard, Columbia, and since 1980, Princeton. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and first reader, the scholar-critic Constance W. Hassett. They have two daughters, one an editor and poet, one a professor of criminal justice.

Heather McHugh
Heather McHugh, recipient of a 2009 MacArthur fellowship, is the author of thirteen books of poetry, translation, and literary essays. Her prize-winning translations include a Griffin International Poetry Prize selection, and her books of original poetry have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. McHugh has taught literature and writing for over three decades, most regularly at the University of Washington in Seattle and in the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Asheville. From 1999 to 2005 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2000 she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2011 to 2018 she hosted respite getaways for full-time family caregivers.

Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, essayist and poet. She is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a Tony Award nominee. Her book of essays, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, was published by FSG and named a notable book by The New York Times. Her book Letters from Max, co-authored with Max Ritvo and published by Milkweed Editions, was on the The New Yorker’s Best Poetry of the Year list. Her plays include For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday; How to Transcend a Happy Marriage; The Oldest Boy; Stage Kiss; Dear Elizabeth; In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play; The Clean House; Passion Play; Dead Man’s Cell Phone; Melancholy Play; Eurydice; Orlando; Late: A Cowboy Song, and a translation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Her plays have been produced on and off Broadway, around the country, and internationally, where they’ve been translated into over fifteen languages. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her MFA from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel. She has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Whiting Award, the Lilly Award, a PEN award for mid-career playwrights, the National Theater Conference’s Person of the Year Award, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.