From Our Staff | January 28, 2013

Every year, The Missouri Review, in partnership with one of our favorite places, Murry’s Restaurant, hosts an annual fundraiser. Guess what? That’s what this blog post is about! We’re throwing a fundraiser in a few weeks, and if you’re in the Columbia area (Boone County? The whole state of Missouri?) on February 10th, you’re invited to attend. Come hang out with us!

Attendees receive a four-course meal, listen to beautiful jazz music, hang out with some of the friendliest and liveliest arts supporters in the region, meet The Missouri Review staff, and–our Big Thing–listen to a reading by award-winning poet Jude Nutter, who is a two-time winner of our Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize for poetry.

Nutter was born North Yorkshire, England, and grew up in northern Germany. Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Atlanta Review, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Notre Dame Review,  and Southern Poetry Review, among many others. Her first book-length collection, Pictures of the Afterlife (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), was published in 2002. The Curator of Silence, her second collection, won the Ernest Sandeen Prize from the University of Notre Dame and was awarded the 2007 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. A third collection, I Wish I Had a Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman, was published in the spring of 2009. She lives in Minneapolis, and we’re delighted she’s donating her time to come to our community.

“Jude Nutter is a poet of singular image and timeless lyricism,” said Austin Segrest, poetry editor at The Missouri Review, who helped choose Nutter for the Editor’s Prize.

Support the arts, jazz music, great literature, wonderful food: what’s not to love? Tickets to hear Nutter speak at the Murry’s Benefit Dinner are $60 and can be purchased by calling Dedra Earl at (573) 882-4474 or Kristine Somerville or (573) 884-9678.

Please join us: we’d love to see you there!

Follow Michael on Twitter: @mpnye