Dr. Kim Stafford, guest author at Bluffton University's annual English Festival on Tuesday, April 10, will be the speaker at the university's 11 a.m. Forum that day in Yoder Recital Hall. Stafford's presentation, "Lyric Life: The Practice of Writing and the Call of Service," is free and open to the public.

"A daily writing practice can inform and sustain a life of service to the world, by harvesting questions, memories, ideas, stories, poems and other acts of discovery and witness for our work to heal the community of Earth," says Stafford, the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose. "Every day you write something is a different kind of day: more buoyant and alive."

Stafford, who holds a Ph.D. in medieval literature from the University of Oregon, is founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., where he has taught since 1979. He has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work has been featured on National Public Radio.