SDSU to welcome prize-winning poet Sara Henning (The Brookings Register): March 22, 2022

BROOKINGS – After a pandemic-related hiatus of more than two years, South Dakota State University’s Department of English and Interdisciplinary Studies is releaunching its visiting author series by welcoming poet Sara Henning for a reading and reception. The event will take place at 7 p.m. March 31 at the South Dakota Art Museum, which will co-host. The free event is open to the public. Henning’s books will be available for purchase and signing.

Henning won the 2019 High Plains Book Award, a prize given annually to the top books in the region. Her latest collection of poetry, “Terra Incognita,” won the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and will be published this month by the Ohio University Press. She has also won the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, the George Bogin Memorial Award, and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award.

Her next book, “Burn” will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2023. 

Henning received her doctorate in English and creative writing from the University of South Dakota in 2016, shaping many of the poems in “View from True North.” She is the coordinator of creative writing at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where she also serves as poetry editor for Stephen F. Austin State University Press.

“Henning’s trajectory as a poet is exciting to watch right now because she’s truly launching to national prominence,” said SDSU associate professor Steven Wingate, coordinator of creative writing. “That, along with her strong connection to the region that shines through in her debut collection, makes Henning an ideal first visitor as we start to bring in writers again.”

Henning moved to South Dakota in 2011 to study in Vermillion, where she not only earned her doctorate but also met her husband, a fourth-generation South Dakotan from Dell Rapids.

“I immediately fell deeply in love with the landscape and with the warm community,” said Henning, who has returned to the state multiple times for events like the South Dakota Festival of Books since starting at Stephen F. Austin. “In a field often flooded with egos and competition, the South Dakota writing community proved to show deep love and support of its own.” 

The Department of English and Interdisciplinary Studies had been regularly bringing in visiting writers, predominantly through its spring Great Plains Writers Conference, until the COVID-19 pandemic. That hiatus offered the opportunity to revise visiting writer appearances, which is planned to take place throughout the academic year.

“We are delighted to bring in visiting writers again because they are such a great way to achieve cross-pollination among literary communities,” said Wingate, who is teaching a poetry seminar this semester. “Online readings have helped fill the void, but there’s nothing like having real people in real spaces to share the literary experience together.”

For further information, email Wingate at Steven.Wingate@sdstate.edu.

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