Award winning poet John Morgan will read from his work and hold a talk, “The Writer and Place,” at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 as part of KBC’s annual visiting writers’ series. He will discuss the importance of setting in a writer’s work. Slides will display some of the magnificent and unusual parts of Alaska that have influenced his writing, including his experiences on a raft trip on the Copper River that resulted in his recently published book-length poem River of Light. 

Morgan also does a six-hour workshop, “Forms of Feeling: Poetry in Our Lives,” on Nov. 8 and 9. Advance registration ($60) is required by Nov. 7.

Morgan studied with Robert Lowell at Harvard, where he won the Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry. At the Iowa Writers Workshop, he earned a master of fine arts and was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize. 

In 1976, Morgan moved to Fairbanks, where he taught for many years at the university and helped found the Midnight Sun Writers’ Conference. He has published five books of poetry, most recently “River of Light: A Conversation with Kabir,” as well as a collection of essays. 

His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and many other magazines. In 2009, he was selected to be the first writer-in-residence at Denali National Park.