Hartsville, SC — Coker College's Department of Communication, Language and Literature presents a poetry and story reading by award-winning North Carolina author Peter Makuck in the C. W. Coker Auditorium in Davidson Hall at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 11. Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

A distinguished professor of arts and sciences at East Carolina University, Makuck is editor of Tar River Poetry and the author of five volumes of poetry and two collections of short stories. A multiple nominee of the prestigious Pushcart Prize, Makuck won the 1988 Kincaid-Brockman Award for his poetry collection Pilgrim, published in1988. He is also winner of the 1993 Charity Randall Citation and he was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award for his collection of short stories, Costly Habits, in 2002.

A resident of Pine Knoll Shores on the North Carolina Outerbanks, Makuck’s work is often inspired by coastal waters and the barrier islands. Two new works by Makuck are forthcoming: Off Season in the Promised Land, a volume of poems to be published by BOA Editions, and Into the Frame, a chapbook of poems, published by Independent Press of Greenville, NC.

Makuck is known for skillfully portraying characters who experience loss in both their personal and professional lives. His stories are often humorous, but also caring and wise, and are vivid in detail and characterization.