March 15, 2006 -- Poet Sterling Plumpp and novelist/nonfiction writer Tom Piazza will be featured creative writers at Delta Blues Symposium XII: Delta Diversity, sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro on Friday, March 31.

They will read from their work at 7:30 p.m. in the Grand Hall of Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Drive, on campus. They will also be available to sign their books.

Long-time professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Plumpp is a Mississippi native. His numerous books of poetry include "Blues Narratives," "Hornman," and "Velvet Bebop Kente Cloth."

His work has been much anthologized. He is the recipient of such awards as the Richard Wright Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Carl Sandburg Literary Prize for Poetry. He was recently the subject of a special section in the December 2005 issue of Arkansas Review, published by ASU.

Piazza is a master of fine arts graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Iowa. His many publications include a novel, "My Cold War," a collection of short stories, "Blues and Trouble," and several books of music criticism.

His most recent book, "Why New Orleans Matters," written after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, was published in 2005. He is the first Grammy Award winner to appear as a featured presenter at the Delta Blues Symposium.

The April 1 reading, like all Symposium events, is free and open to the public.

-- information provided by the Delta Blues Symposium committee