Richard Price, author of such novels as "The Wanderers," "Freedomland" and the best-selling "Clockers," and a prolific writer of screenplays-one of which, "The Color of Money," earned him an Oscar nomination-will bring his urban sensibilities to UB on Wednesday as the first guest in the "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" literary series.

	Fraser
	Vicuña

The spring 2001 lineup for the popular series also will feature senior American poet Kathleen Fraser, a major figure in the alternative poetry world, and Charles Altieri, a former UB English professor noted among his contemporaries as a leading critic of 20th-century poetry.

"Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" also will welcome as part of its "ñ," or Latin American, poetics series Chilean poet and performance artist Cecilia Vicuña, a New York City dweller whose installations have been exhibited in such worldwide venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Chilean Mapuche poet Leonel Lienlaf and Maya poet and Guatemala native Humberto Ak'abal-writers of Spanish and the indigenous languages of Mapudungun and K'iche', respectively-will round out the series.

The spring slate also will include UB's inaugural digital poetry conference, "E-POETRY, 2001: An International Digital Poetry Festival," April 18-21, as well as a cross-border exchange between Toronto and Buffalo, "Poetry Across the Frontier" (I and II), which will culminate in a Canadian poetry festival April 14 in Buffalo.

Charles Bernstein, series coordinator, director of UB's Poetics Program and David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, says that while Price is atypical for the series-"he exists in mass culture, whereas most of our writers are very obscure"-his participation demonstrates the series' range of writers. Price, whose trademark style is his deft use of the vernacular, will read from his prose at 4 p.m. on Wednesday in the Center for the Arts Screening Room, North Campus.

Fraser, whose works include the essay collection "Translating the Unspeakable: Poetry and the Innovative Necessity" and selected poems "Il Cuore: The Heart," will give a poetry reading at 4 p.m. Feb. 28 in the CFA Screening Room. She also will speak at 12:30 p.m. March 1 in 438 Clemens Hall, North Campus.

A major proponent of feminist concerns and founding editor of "How2"-an on-line journal devoted to non-traditional approaches in poetry and scholarship by women-Fraser has continued to take a stance on women's issues in her own writing, while also supporting the work of innovative poets from the early part of the last century up to the present, Bernstein said.

Vicuña will be at UB for three separate events, the first of which will be a talk by the filmmaker, painter, sculptor and poet, "Words within Words," at noon March 19 in 540 Clemens Hall. Vicuña will screen and discuss her films "What is Poetry to You?," "Cloud-net" and others at 8 p.m. March 20 in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 2495 Main St., Buffalo. And at 4 p.m. March 21, she will give a poetry reading in the CFA Screening Room.

Vicuña is the author of 12 books of poetry, including "QUIPOem/The Precarious" and "Unravelling Words and the Weaving of Water."

Altieri, a UB English faculty member from 1968-75, will speak on "Affect and Intention in Robert Creeley's Poetry During the 1960s" at 4 p.m. April 11 in the CFA Screening Room. Currently a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of California-Berkeley, Altieri-who specializes in literature, visual art and contemporary poetry-is the author of "Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry" and "Postmodernisms Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts."

Other series guests will include Michael Gizzi and Gillian McCain, Feb. 14; Jed Rasula and Darren Wershler-Henry, Feb. 21; Fiona Templeton and Steve McCaffrey, Feb. 24; Robert Flanagan, March 23; Julie Patton, March 24; Tan Lin, March 28 and 29; Donald Revell, April 4, and Michael Basinski, June 8. Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, will appear at Buffalo State College at 8 p.m. May 17 for an event sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center.

The complete schedule of events for the "Wednesdays at 4 PLUS" series, which will continue through June 8, can be found at http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/calendar/spring01.html.