Poet Elise Paschen is set to participate in the 2026-2027 Gertrude C. & Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series on October 8. The event will kick off with a literary salon at 6:30 PM, followed by her public reading at 7:00 PM, and conclude with a book signing at 8:00 PM. The venue for this event is the Vanderbilt Special Collections Library, located at 1101 19th Avenue South in Nashville.
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Elise Paschen is the author of six poetry collections, including her most recent work, *Blood Wolf Moon*, which has earned the Foreword Indie Book of the Year Award in Poetry and the Oklahoma Book Award in Poetry. Her other notable collections include *Tallchief*, *The Nightlife*, *Bestiary*, *Infidelities* (which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and *Houses: Coasts*. Paschen received the Garrison Medal for Poetry during her undergraduate studies at Harvard and holds both M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from Oxford University. As a member of the Osage Nation, she has also received the Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs Medal.
Her poetry has appeared in prestigious publications such as *Poetry Magazine* and *The New Yorker*, as well as in various anthologies, including *The Best American Poetry* and *A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry*. Paschen is also known for her editorial work, having compiled *The Eloquent Poem: 128 Contemporary Poems and Their Making* and the best-selling anthology *Poetry Speaks to Children*, among others. She previously served as the Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America and co-founded Poetry in Motion, a program that places poetry posters in public transportation.
Currently, Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Gertrude C. and Harold S. Vanderbilt Reading Series honors Cornelius Vanderbilt’s great-grandson and his wife. The series invites several professional writers each semester to campus, offering students and the Nashville community opportunities to engage with contemporary literary voices.