Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and bestselling author Peter Balakian will speak at the University of Delaware at 5 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 12, in Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts.

“An Evening with Peter Balakian” is free and open to the public. His talk will be followed by a reception and book signing until 7:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts lobby.

Balakian, who was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English at Colgate University, where he also is director of creative writing. He joined the Colgate faculty in 1980 and was the first director of the university's Center for Ethics and World Societies.

He is the author of several books of poems, most recently Ozone Journal, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Other collections include June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974-2000; Father Fisheye (1979); Sad Days of Light (1983); Reply From Wilderness Island (1988); Dyer's Thistle (1996); and several fine limited editions.

Balakian’s memoir Black Dog of Fate is the winner of the PEN/Albrand Prize for memoir and a New York Times Notable Book Award. He also is the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best book in English on the subject of genocide and human rights, which also was a New York Times Notable Book and New York Times and national best seller.

His work, including essays on poetry, culture, art and social thought, has appeared widely in American magazines and journals and in anthologies.

He is co-founder and co-editor, with the poet Bruce Smith, of the poetry magazine Graham House Review, which was published from 1976-1996, and is the co-translator (with Nevart Yaghlian) of the book of poems Bloody News From My Friend by the Armenian poet Siamanto.

Balakian's prizes and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Emily Clark Balch Prize for poetry and Movses Khorenatsi Medal from the Republic of Armenia.

The Oct. 12 event is sponsored by the University’s Department of English, the Delaware Humanities Forum and UD’s Jewish Studies Program, Department of Philosophy and College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office.