Jenny L. Factor credit: Caltech
Jenny Factor, author of two poetry collections and lecturer in poetry at Caltech, will give a poetry reading on Monday, April 21 at 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in Dabney Lounge. The event, part of the James Michelin Distinguished Visitors Program and sponsored Caltech’s Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, will feature Factor’s work including her recent collection “Want, the Lake.”
“This is a book guided by curiosity and loving alertness, until the anchor lifts, the timestamp fades, the ego falls away, and the reader is set free into the wet abyss of human need,” according to Caltech’s event announcement of Factor’s latest work.
The reading will showcase Factor’s second collection “Want, the Lake” (Red Hen Press, 2024), characterized as “an expansive dreamscape made of—and wrecked by—language, mother’s milk, purple jacaranda, queer longing, snowy fields, and the rich stuff of domesticity and fable.”
Attendees will experience both a poetry reading and discussion during the hour-long session.
Factor has established herself in the literary world with her first collection, “Unraveling at the Name” (Copper Canyon, 2002), which won the Hayden Carruth Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry has appeared in prestigious publications including the Paris Review and notable anthologies such as California Poets from the Gold Rush to the Present and the Best American Erotic Poems.
The poetry reading is free and open to the public. Those seeking additional information can contact Joanna Poon at jpoon@caltech.edu or by phone at (626) 395-1724.
