The Cody Writers Series returns on Thursday, April 13 with Billings poet Cara Chamberlain scheduled to appear and read selections from her various works. The event will take place in the Grizzly Room at the Cody Library beginning at 6 p.m.
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Chamberlain grew up hiking in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains, learned to bird-watch along the bays and inlets of the Great Salt Lake, and attended the University of Utah, where she received her BA in English before earning an MA in Creative Writing from Purdue University.
Chamberlain has taught at several colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, including Northwest College, the University of Maine Fort Kent, the University of Moncton-Edmundston Campus, and Florida Southern College. In 2006, she and her husband moved to Billings where she taught at both Rocky Mountain College and MSU Billings. She is currently a free-lance copy editor.
The author of Hidden Things, The Divine Botany, Lament of the Antichrist in a Secular World and Other Poems, and To Gaze Upon Their Loveliness, Chamberlain will read selections from those collections as well as new poems and prose. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Nimrod, Boston Review, The Southern Review, and Poems Across the Big Sky. She has received four Pushcart Prize nominations and been a finalist in the Ashland Poetry Press, Lo-Fi Novella, and Blue Light Book Award contests.
In addition to her literary career, Chamberlain is a conservationist and advocate for animals of all kinds. She also supports native-plant and pollinator-friendly gardening.