The Warren Community College Visiting Authors Series continues on Thursday, December 5, with a reading by the former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins. The reading, beginning at 6:00 p.m. in room E206, is free and open to the public.

Billy Collins’ most recent book is Water, Water: Poems, released in November 2024 by Penguin Random House. His other collections of poetry include Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Nine Horses, The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, Ballistics, Horoscopes for the Dead, and Picnic, Lightning. His books Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems 2003 – 2013, The Rain in Portugal, Whale Day And Other Poems, and Musical Tables were New York Times bestsellers. In addition, he has edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day.

No poet since Robert Frost has managed to amass high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal as Billy Collins has. His work has appeared in a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar. He is a Guggenheim fellow and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion.” His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry. Other honors Billy Collins has received for his poetry are fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also been awarded the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize — all awarded by Poetry magazine. In October 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry.

In June 2001, Billy Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate (2001-2003).  In January 2004, he was named New York State Poet Laureate (2004-2006). He is a former Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. In 2016, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

Mr. Collins’ reading will be followed by a Q & A with the audience and a book signing.  Frenchtown Bookshop will be on site for the reading, selling Collins’ books.

The Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Division of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, a partner agency of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. All physical site facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. Sign language interpretation for any VAS event is available with two weeks’ notice. Any questions about the event should be directed to Professor BJ Ward, who has directed the Visiting Authors Series for the last 25 years: ward@warren.edu .

Warren Community College, located at 475 Route 57 West in Washington, NJ, offers creative writing workshops and literature courses. To find out more about WCCC’s course offerings, or for directions to the Washington campus, please visit www.warren.edu.