Award-winning poet and essayist Jane Satterfield will read from her new memoir Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond at York on Thursday.
Born in England and educated in the US, Satterfield was the recipient of a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and the author of two poetry books, Assignation at Vanishing Point (Elixir Press, 2003) and Shepherdess with an Automatic (Washington Writers' Publishing House, 2000).
A professor at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, Satterfield will read on Oct. 22, from 2 to 4:30pm, in 214 Calumet College, Keele campus. Light refreshments will be served and everyone is welcome. The event is hosted by York’s Creative Writing Program in the Department of English.
Right: Jane Satterfield
In addition, Satterfield will participate in the Association for Research on Mothering conference, Mothering and the Environment: The Natural, The Social, The Built, at York Oct. 22 to 25.
Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond (Demeter Press, 2009), her first book of non-fiction, is billed as a thoughtful and emotionally charged memoir of pilgrimage and transformation. Daughters of Empire weighs the powerful individual drama of pregnancy and motherhood against a larger backdrop of culture shock and marital tension.
On her first return trip to England in over a decade, Satterfield faced a woman’s fundamental decision – to become a mother or to forge a new life on her own. The decision, however, was more difficult than expected. Daughters of Empire explores the world of mid-1990s Britain as well as the cultural and literary legacy that continues to haunt, shape and challenge Satterfield. She brings to life a provocative personal history through fascinating detours into music, popular culture and literary mothers.
Satterfield holds a master of fine arts from the University of Iowa. She has received three Individual Artist Awards in poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council, as well as fellowships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.