Lecture Date: March 8, 2022
The Sodexo Lecture
In this talk, Heather Clark will discuss her award-winning biography of Sylvia Plath, an iconic poet who holds a mythic place in the public imagination. Clark will discuss her reasons for embarking upon a new biography of Plath; her determination to present Plath as an innovative writer rather than a psychological “case”; and the challenges of writing about Plath’s mental illness, troubled marriage, and suicide.
Speaker: Heather Clark
Heather Clark is the author of three award-winning books on modern poetry, most recently Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, which was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize for Best First Biography. Red Comet was named a “Book of the Year” in the Guardian, O, the Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America Book Club, The Times (London), Lit Hub, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere. Clark has received recent fellowships from the National Endowment from the Humanities and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield in Yorkshire, England.