UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Renowned feminist poet and Penn State Professor Emerita Robin Becker will offer a reading from her new collection, “Midsummer Count: New and Selected Poems,” to conclude this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
“Midsummer Count,” published by the University of New Mexico Press, features Becker’s best work from eight previous books alongside nearly 30 new poems that demonstrate her lifelong exploration of poetic form as well as Jewish identity, lesbian life and the experiences of a daughter, lover and teacher, with attention to beauty, grief and compassion. Becker published six books in the Pitt Poetry Series, including Lambda-Award winning “All American Girl” and most recently “The Black Bear Inside Me.” Her book reviews and poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry and Slate.
Becker long served as poetry editor for The Women's Review of Books, where she wrote a column on the contemporary poetry scene, "Field Notes.” Her awards include fellowships from the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, the NEA, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and GLAGS at CUNY.
Becker retired from Penn State in 2017 as Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies. To honor her service, the Creative Writing Program and Steven Fisher, a 1970 Penn State graduate in English, launched a crowdfunding campaign to create the Robin Becker Award in Creative Writing to provide financial assistance to a student that shows promise in creative writing (and poetry in particular). Ky McKenna, who is currently pursuing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English, received the inaugural award this year.
The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries. A full list of readings in the 2025-26 series can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.