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CORVALLIS - Stephen Dun, an acclaimed American poet who has been called one the most important voices of his generation, will give a reading from his work and talk informally about the art of writing poetry, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, in the Corvallis Arts Center.

The event, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is free and open to the public. A book-signing will follow. Dunn's talk is the second event in the 1999-2000 Oregon State University Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by the OSU English Department, the Center for Writing and Learning, and ASOSU.

He is the author of 10 books of poetry, including "Loosestrife," a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in 1996. Two books of his prose, "Walking Light: Essays & Memoirs," in 1993, and "Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs," in 1998, were published by Norton.

Dunn has received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. He is trustee fellow in the arts and professor of creative writing at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey.

Literary critic Judith Kitchen said of his work: "Stephen Dunn's subject has never been the large issue, the political or the abstract. What is at stake in his poetry is more immediate and more essential: how to live the one life we're given with integrity, with humor and exuberance, and yes, with grace."

The Corvallis Arts Center is located at 700 S.W. Madison in Corvallis.