NEIU's Presidential Lecture Series will present poet, essayist and activist Adrienne Rich on Thursday, April 24 at 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Recital Hall. This event is free and open to the public.

Since receiving the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1951 at the age of 21, Rich has not stopped writing in her distinct voice, with strength and conviction. Rich is the recipient of the 1999 Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also been distinguished by an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Common Wealth Award in Literature, the National Book Award, the 1996 Tanning Award for Mastery in the Art of Poetry, and the MacArthur Fellowship.

Rich is the author of more than 16 volumes of poetry and has written five books of nonfiction prose. Her most recent book of essays is titled "Arts of the Possible: Essays & Conversations." Her 2004 collection of poems, "The School Among the Ruins," was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award and was chosen as one of Library Journal's Best Poetry picks of 2004.

In the fall of 2006, Rich was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. Rich's latest book of poems, "Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth," was published in October 2007.