Celebrated poet Ruth Stone will read from her works at Cornell for the Creative Writing Program's biannual Chasen Poetry Reading Thursday, April 19, at 4 p.m. in the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall. The reading is free and open to the public.

Stone, now in her 80s, is professor of English emerita at the State University of New York at Binghamton and author of 11 books of poetry. Her last book, Ordinary Words , won the Book Circle Critics Award and the Eric Mathieu King Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1999.

A Virginia native, Stone is the recipient of many honors, including the Bunting Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Delmore Schwartz Award, the Shelley Memorial Award and the Cerf Lifetime Achievement Award from the state of Vermont, where she has lived a rugged, rustic life for many years.

Poet Sharon Olds calls Stone's work "dazzling, original, fearless, funny and deeply moving." Southern Illinois Press recently published a book about her life and work, The House Is Made of Poetry, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Wendy Barker. Stone's work is highly accessible and provocative, crossing lines of class, race and age. Her other collections include Second-Hand Coat and Simplicity, published by Paris Press, the feminist press based in Ashfield, Mass., which also published Ordinary Words .

For more information about the reading contact Michael Koch at (607) 255-3385.