Please join us for an online talk from William Barillas, “Once More, The Round”: Roethke’s Last Word. This is the first of four talks as part of our 2026 Virtual Speaker Series.
The annual Virtual Speaker Series features talks by Roethke scholars who recontextualize or offer new interpretations of Roethke’s work and talks from poets whose own work has been influenced by Roethke, providing a contemporary connection to the classic texts.
Please register below and the zoom link will be emailed to you before the event. The email will come from info@friendsofroethke.org.
This is a pay-as-you-can series. The Friends of Roethke is a non-profit 501c3 organization, and every donation goes right back into our programming and restoration efforts. We appreciate any amount you are able to donate.
About William Barillas
William Barillas has published scholarly work on Midwestern literature, poetry, and creative nonfiction. A former professor of English, he was born and spent his early years in Michigan, lived many years in Wisconsin, and now resides in Connecticut, where he writes and edits. His scholarly book The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland (2006) earned strong reviews and is a much-cited study in the field. He edited A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke (2020), the first book on Roethke published in the twenty-first century. He serves on the board of the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation and both the executive and editorial boards of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, for which he is currently president-elect.