National Poetry Month has always been celebrated at Sierra Nevada College in Incline in a big way, and this year is no exception, with several high-caliber poet-performers gracing the campus—and one even joining the SNC English faculty.

On April 22 from 7-9pm in the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, the community is invited to a poetry reading by Nathalie Handal, an award-winning Palestinian-American poet, playwright, and writer who has authored multiple poetry collections and has been involved either as a writer, director, or producer in more than 20 theatrical and/or film productions worldwide.

She served as editor of “The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology” and “Language of a New Century: Poetry of the Middle East”, was a finalist for the 2009 A Room of Her Own’s Freedom Award, and is the author of “The Lives of Rain”, as well as a forthcoming poetry book, “Love and Strange Horses”, which will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Copies of her books will be available for sale at the SNC Bookstore.

Local poets will stand and deliver for a chance to take home the title of Tahoe Slam Poet of the Year at SNC’s Annual Tahoe Slam Competition on April 30 from 7-10pm in Patterson Hall.

This year the festivities will be hosted by a trio of MCs known collectively as the Aerosol Love Letter Campaign: Matt Blesse, Terry Taplin, and Abe Becker, former members of the UC Berkeley National Slam Team. Competitors will be limited to the first 10 people to sign up, so hopeful contestants should plan on arriving a minimum of 20 minutes before the event to sign up for a chance to compete.

Judges will be chosen at random from the audience, and audience members are encouraged to participate (Note: booing or cheering the judges is acceptable; heckling the poets is not).

Poets will be limited to a maximum of three minutes for their first utterance (just the poem, please; no long preambles). First-, second-, and third-place winners will receive cash prizes.

And in the fall, Iraq veteran soldier/award-winning writer Brian Turner will be joining SNC’s English faculty on a full-time basis. Turner is currently promoting his latest work, “Phantom Noise” (Alice James Books), which is being launched—coincidentally or not—during National Poetry Month, and which will be available in the SNC Bookstore.

Turner’s “Here, Bullet”, a collection of poetry about a year he spent deployed in Iraq, has garnered a number of literary awards, including the 2006 PEN Center USA Best in the West Literary Award in Poetry, the 2007 Poets’ Prize, and selection in the New York Times Editor’s Choice.

For more information on any of the events, contact English Program Chair June Saraceno at jsaraceno@sierranevada.edu or at (775) 881.7514.