Celebrated poet explores power of words at MSU’s Visiting Writers Series
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State University’s Department of English welcomes award-winning author Cindy Juyoung Ok, an accomplished poet, translator and professor, as the featured guest for the 2025 Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series.
Free and open to the public, the event takes place Tuesday [Feb.18], 5:30 p.m., in the John Grisham Room, third floor of MSU’s Mitchell Memorial Library.
“Cindy Ok is a highly talented poet and translator whose writing is immensely beautiful. Having her visit us will be a great opportunity for our students to interact with an important contemporary voice in American letters,” said Saddiq Dzukogi, an MSU assistant professor of English helping coordinate the event.
Ok is the author of “Ward Toward,” winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, and the translator of the forthcoming “The Hell of That Star” from the Wesleyan Poetry Series. She serves as an assistant professor in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of California, Davis. A former high school physics teacher, Ok has received numerous accolades, including the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Forward Prize in Poetry from the U.K. and the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation in 2024.
Attendees will have the chance to engage with Ok during a Q&A session and a book signing following the reading.
The Price Caldwell Visiting Writers Series was established through an endowment from Alice Carol Caldwell and her family as a memorial to her late husband, a former MSU professor of English who founded the university’s creative writing program. Caldwell was deeply committed to fostering literary talent and served as a leader within the Southern Literary Festival organization.
For more information about Ok’s visit, contact Becky Hagenston, the Department of English’s director of creative writing, at bhagenston@english.msstate.edu.
For more details about the College of Arts and Sciences, visit www.cas.msstate.edu.
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