Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Language, Literature and Writing will host authors Jacques J. Rancourt and Robert Long Foreman during its next installment of the Visiting Writers Series at 7 pm, Tuesday, February 21 in the JW Jones Student Union Living Room.

The event is free and open to the public. Kawasaki, Green Tower Press and the department of language, literature and writing are sponsors of the reading.

Rancourt is the author of “Novena,” published this year by Pleiades Press and a winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize. He has held poetry fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, jubilat, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and Best New Poets 2014, among others. He lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work can be found at jacquesjrancourt.com.

Foreman is the author of “Among Other Things,” published this year by Pleiades Press and a winner of the Robert C. Jones Prize. His essays and short stories have appeared in Agni, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review and the Utne Reader, among others. He has won a Pushcart Prize and lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His work can be found at robertlongforeman.com.

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to promote creativity, diversity and freedom of expression. It supports the fundamental idea that literature is a living and meaningful art form that provides opportunities to better understand the lives of others and the world in which we live.