UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—Award-winning poet Victoria Chang will deliver the 2026 Emily Dickinson Lecture in American Poetry at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the Penn State University Park campus. The reading is free and open to the public.
Chang’s most recent book of poems, “Tree of Knowledge,” was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the United States and Corsair/Little Brown in the U.K. in July 2026. Her previous book of poems, “With My Back to the World” (published by the same publishers in 2024), received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection.
Other books of poetry written by Chang include “The Trees Witness Everything,” “OBIT,” and “Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief.” She has also written several children’s books, including “Eureka.”
Chang has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is currently the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and director of Poetry@Tech.
The Emily Dickinson Lectureship in American Poetry is made possible through the generosity of Penn State Alumni George and Barbara Kelly, with additional support from the Penn State Department of English and University Libraries. A full list of readings in the 2026-27 series can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.