Sunken Garden: We're Not Dead Any More

Hill-Stead Museum names Jeffrey Levine
the Festival's new Artistic Director

Hill-Stead's summer-long Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, the museum's largest public program, will return in the summer of 2008 following a one-year hiatus. Jeffrey Levine, poet, publisher and teacher, has assumed the role of Artistic Director for the 16th season of the Festival, which will include some of the most talented poets and musicians in the country. Levine will be responsible for organizing the Festival and for spearheading a fundraising campaign to ensure that it thrives.

Historically, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival has charmed an audience of more than 5,000 each summer, and has engaged a listening audience of 1,250,000 via National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday and five Connecticut public radio stations. New to the 2008 program will be pre-performance discussions and conversations with the artists.

Jeffrey Levine is the founder of Tupelo Press (www.tupelopress.org ), an independent literary press located in Dorset, VT, and one of the most important publishers of poetry and literary fiction in the country. An award-winning poet, Levine has an MFA in poetry and teaches English at Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford, CT. "I look forward to helping produce a summer filled with delight and inspiration for our many current fans," commented Levine, "and to enchant those who have yet to discover this venue that Galway Kinnell has called 'a little paradise for poetry'."

Stay tuned for more information and a 2008 schedule, and plan on joining us once again in the summer of 2008 for world-renowned poetry and music in Hill-Stead's Sunken Garden!

Visit www.hillstead.org often and you won't miss a thing!