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Photo Credit: Sherrie Y. Young
Mark Doty (center, back row) with Sage/Queens participants.
Writing is the thing that
makes me feel most alive
-Mark Doty
In June 1997, Poet Mark Doty worked with senior citizens
at Forest Hills Community House and SAGE/Queens,
an organization that caters to the gay and lesbian senior
citizen community, as part of the Foundation's Settlement
House Author-Residency Program.
Photo Credit: Sherrie Y.
Young
Mr. Doty (right) spent most of his residency at SAGE
where he read poetry and conducted a writing workshop
with the creative writing group. A free public event
took place on the last day of Mr. Doty's residency,
which featured him giving a reading along with the participants,
who read work produced in the workshop.
His book, My Alexandria, was a 1993 National Book
Poetry Finalist that also won the National Book Critics
Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,
and the T.S. Eliot Prize (U.K). Mr. Doty's memoir, Heaven's
Coast, was a New York Times Notable Book of
the Year in 1996 and winner of the 1997 PEN/Martha Allbrand
Nonfiction Prize. Copies of My Alexandria and Heaven's
Coast were donated to participants.
At Forest Hills Community House, Mr. Doty read poetry
to the participants, and spoke about his "writing
life." At Sage/Queens, he conducted writing workshops
with the creative writing group.
The 1997 National Book Foundation's
Settlement House Author-Residency House program was
made possible with funding from the Theodore H. Barth
Foundation, McGraw-Hill Foundation, and New York State
Council on the Arts.
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Mark
Doty at 
