Christopher Mlalazi reads with Ron Slate at the Sacramento Poetry Centre

Christopher Mlalazi read from his work at the Sacramento Poetry Centre on October 11. Also reading at the same event was American poet Ron Slate.

Chris read from his award-winning collection Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township.

Ron Slate earned his Masters degree in creative writing from Stanford University in 1973 and did his doctoral work in American literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He started a poetry magazine, The Chowder Review, in 1973 which was published through 1988. He lives in Milton, Massachusetts.

The Incentive of the Maggot, his first book of poems, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2005. The collection was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle poetry prize and the Lenore Marshall Prize of the Academy of American Poets. The collection won the Bakeless Poetry Prize and the Larry Levis Reading Prize of Virginia Commonwealth University.

The Great Wave, his second book, was published by Houghton in April 2009.

Chris earlier that day spoke about his work to students of creative writing, and others, at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento.