HOUSTON - Poet and memoirist Mark Doty has been selected as inaugural speaker of the Helen Orman Reading Series at Houston Community College Southwest. Doty will speak Wednesday, November 10 at 12:30 p.m. in the Scarcella Center Auditorium at the HCC Stafford Campus, 10141 Cash Road.

The reading series, in honor of the author, poet, artist and Chair of Southwest College's Literature, Languages, Philosophy and Education Department who died tragically earlier this year, will be sponsored by the Southwest English Department, the Southwest College Student Development/Student Life Office, the Southwest Writers, and Barnes and Noble Bookstore.

The series is free and the public is invited.

“This is an excellent opportunity not only for our students and faculty, but also for the Southwest area community to enjoy a rich and rewarding afternoon with one of America’s noted poets,” said Jeff Lindemann, who is coordinating the event along with Marie Dybala.

Doty is the author of two memoirs Firebird (1999) and Heaven's Coast (1996). His collections of poetry include Turtle, Swan: Poems (1987), Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (1991), My Alexandria (1993), Atlantis (1995), Favrile (1997), Sweet Machine (1998), An Island Sheaf (1998), Murano (2000), and Source (2001).

In his distinguished career, he has received the Ambassador Book Award, the Bingham Poetry Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a PEN/Martha Albrand Nonfiction Prize, and the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry.

His collection My Alexandria was chosen by Philip Levine for the National Poetry Series; for this collection he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and received Britain's T. S. Eliot Prize.

Doty has received fellowships from numerous foundations including the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill, Rockefeller, and Whiting. Currently he divides his time between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Houston where he is a professor in the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program.