Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize winner, National Humanities Medalist, and former U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading on campus as part of the Cooper Series. She indulged the audience by reading several requested poems and sharing the stories that inspired them as well as a bit about her writing process.

At the inaugural event of the Kathryn Morgan Spring Poetry Festival, faculty members, administrators, alumni, and students read selected works from Envisions, Morgan's 2003 volume of poems.

Morgan, Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot Professor Emerita of History, was the first African American professor at the College, and the first African American woman to be granted tenure. She is the author of Children of Strangers, the first work of African American family folklore by a folklorist.