Beth Ann Fennelly to Be Featured Speaker in Terre Ware Author Lecture Series

Arkansas State University–Mountain Home will welcome acclaimed poet, author and educator Beth Ann Fennelly as the next featured speaker in the Terre Ware Author Lecture Series on Thursday, October 1, at 7 p.m. The event will take place in the Trout Room at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center at ASUMH and is open to the public.

Fennelly served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2016 to 2021 and teaches in the Master of Fine Arts Program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year. Her work spans poetry, essays, novels and the increasingly popular form of micro-memoir.

She is the author of three poetry collections published by W. W. Norton: Open House, Tender Hooks and Unmentionables. Her prose works include Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, a collection of essays; The Tilted World, a novel co-authored with her husband, novelist Tom Franklin; and Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, published in 2018.

Her newest book, The Irish Goodbye, Memoirs & Micro-Memoirs, was published by W. W. Norton in March 2026. The collection ranges from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, building a portrait of Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer and deeply original observer of life's challenges and joys.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution praised Fennelly's work, writing, “Beth Ann Fennelly’s genre-defying collection is so engaging and readable that you won’t even notice how much you’re learning about confronting the hardest challenge we all share: being human.”

Fennelly's work has earned grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, United States Artists, a Pushcart Prize and a Fulbright to Brazil. Her poetry has appeared in more than 50 anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Poets of the New Century and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet.

A contributing editor to The Oxford American, Fennelly also writes freelance about travel, culture and design for numerous magazines. Her nonfiction has received the Orlando Award in Nonfiction from A Room of Her Own, the Lamar York Prize from The Chattahoochee Review and the Porter Fleming Award for Excellence in the Essay. She was also the first woman honored with the University of Notre Dame's Distinguished Alumni in the Arts Award.

Fennelly lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her husband and their three children.

The Terre Ware Author Lecture Series brings accomplished authors to ASUMH to share their work, experiences and perspectives with students, readers and the community. The series honors the legacy of Terre Ware and her commitment to literature, education and lifelong learning.

“Beth Ann Fennelly has a remarkable ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary,” said Christy Keirn, vice chancellor for institutional advancement at ASUMH. “Her work is thoughtful, funny, honest and deeply relatable. We are excited to welcome her to Mountain Home and give our community the opportunity to hear directly from such an accomplished and engaging writer.”

The Beth Ann Fennelly Terre Ware Author Lecture will be held Thursday, October 1, at 7 p.m. in the Trout Room at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center on the ASUMH campus. The event is open to the public.

For more information about the Terre Ware Author Lecture Series and upcoming events at ASUMH, visit www.asumh.edu or follow ASUMH on social media.