Release Date: April 22, 2005

MONMOUTH, Ill. — Children’s book author Kate Hovey will give a presentation at Monmouth College on April 22 at 7 p.m. in the Highlander Room in the college’s Stockdale Center.

Entitled “Exploring Greek Mythology through Poetry and the Ancient Art of Masking,” Hovey’s presentation is free and open to the public.

Also a designer and metalsmith, Hovey has crafted masks for university theater productions, silver and gold jewelry and even metal clothing for rock-and-roll performers. She is currently using her mask-making skills in the classroom, incorporating the larger-than-life copper masks she makes into dramatic readings of her work.

Hovey became interested in writing at an early age. Her favorite collections of fairy tales and mythology provided the initial inspiration, but it was her seventh grade literature teacher who gave Hovey the encouragement she needed to pursue her writing goals. In college, her childhood passion for Greek mythology led her to study classical literature.

“My favorite book, ‘The Metamorphoses of Ovid,’ was required reading for one of my college courses,” she said, “but I still refer to it constantly and enjoy re-reading it in new translations.”

In addition to classical studies, Hovey pursued her interest in poetry and writing at Northwestern University, later studying with noted poet and anthologist Myra Cohn Livingston at UCLA.

Hovey first remembers “hearing voices” in 1992, during one of her frequent visits to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. Inspired by the magnificent marble statues of the Getty’s world-renowned Greco-Roman antiquities collection, she soon began writing poems in the voices of the gods, goddesses and heroes of ancient Greece. “Ancient Voices,” the poetry collection inspired by those visits, was published by Margaret K. McElderry Books in 2004.

One of the poems from the collection became a picture book. “Arachne Speaks” received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and garnered high praise from such noted authors as Lee Bennett Hopkins and Geraldine McCaughrean. Hovey also received the 2002 Marion Vannett Ridgeway Memorial Honor Book Award for “Arachne Speaks” in recognition of her “distinguished debut in the field of children’s literature.”

The plays of Euripides and Aeschylus continue to inspire her, as do the epics of Homer and Virgil. Her most recent work, “Voices of the Trojan War,” revisits The Iliad of Homer, retelling the tragic story of Troy through the voices of the gods and heroes who fought there.

For more information, visit the www.katehovey.com web site.