Sara Henning, author of two volumes of poetry, will be the first guest of the 2019 James Hoggard Reading Series at Midwestern State University. Henning will read poems from her award-winning manuscript View from True North at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU Texas.

View from True North, published by Southern Illinois University Press, won the 2017 Crab Orchard Poetry Open Prize. Her other collections include A Sweeter Water from 2013, and two chapbooks, Garden Effigies and To Speak of Dahlias.

In 2015, Henning won the Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, judged by Alberto RÝos. She has published poems in several journals and anthologies, most notably Quarterly West, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, Passages North, RHINO, Meridian, and the Cincinnati Review. She appeared as featured author for the September 2016 issue of Connotation Press and 4 PM Count, a journal associated with the Arts Endowment's interagency initiative with Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Prisons in Yankton, South Dakota.

Henning lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, where she teaches at Stephen F. Austin State University and serves as poetry editor for Stephen F. Austin State University Press. She graduated with honors from the University of Georgia and earned an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of South Dakota.

James Hoggard retired in 2013 as the Perkins-Prothro Distinguished Professor of English after teaching at MSU since 1966. Assistant Professor of English John Schulze said naming the series for Hoggard was an appropriate way to honor his contributions to MSU Texas, Wichita Falls, and the broader literary community. This event is free and open to the public. It is supported by the Bryan L. Lawrence Endowment; the Department of English, Humanities, & Philosophy; and the Prothro-Yeager College of Humanities and Social Sciences. For more information, contact Schulze at john.schulze@msutexas.edu.