Entrada Institute End-of-Season Gala to Feature Famed Poet David Lee, Honor Rosemary Sucec
On October 20, the Entrada Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the arts, humanities and natural history of the Capitol Reef area, will host a special “friend-raising” celebration in Torrey. The event will mark the end of the institute’s successful 2012 season. Special guest David Lee, Utah’s first Poet Laureate, will mark the occasion with a reading and Rosemary Sucec, a cultural anthropologist with the National Park Service who has worked extensively in the Capitol Reef area, will be honored with the organization’s Ward Roylance Award. Suggested admission is $25 and includes a dinner buffet and beverages. Proceeds go to support Entrada’s programming including its scholarship program at Wayne High.
For more than 35 years, David Lee has been writing unique narrative poems in the voices of the people of the rural southwest. In 1997, he was named Utah’s first poet laureate, and is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry, including So Quietly the Earth, Driving & Drinking, and News from Down to the Café. A former seminary candidate, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer, he has a Ph.D. concentration in John Milton and taught at Southern Utah University for three decades. His 2004 book So Quietly the Earth was among the 25 books chosen for the New York Public Library’s annual “Books to Remember” list. He has also been honored as one of Utah’s top twelve writers of all time by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities. A longtime friend of the Entrada Institute, David Lee is a past recipient of the Ward Roylance Award.
As one of 20 cultural anthropologists with the National Park Service, Rosemary Sucec works with cultural communities whose associations with national parks precede that of the federal government. She gathers data and assists with developing programs, policies and guidelines to help land managers identify and protect culturally significant resources to traditionally associated peoples such as American Indians, cattle ranchers and Latter-day Saints. As an NPS employee, she worked in the Denver Regional Office, in Yellowstone National Park, and is now located at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area/Rainbow Bridge National Monument. Her publications include Fulfilling Destinies, Sustaining Lives: The Landscape of Waterpocket Fold: an Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of American Indian Histories and Resource Uses Within Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, and on Lands Surrounding it.
The October 20 event will be held at the home of Kirsten Allen and Mark Bailey in Torrey. Space is limited and advance reservations are strongly suggested. For more information, directions to their home, or to RSVP, visit https://www.entradainstitute.org/support/entrada-friendraiser/ for additional information.