Jeff Gundy, a professor of English at Bluffton University, will present a program on Thursday, March 27, on his newly published book, “Somewhere Near Defiance.”

Beginning with refreshments at 3:45 p.m., the event—also featuring student participants—is free and open to the public in Bluffton’s Musselman Library Reading Room. Afterward, Gundy will sign copies of his book, which will be available for purchase.

The author is “at the top of his game” in “Somewhere Near Defiance,” says Daniel Shank Cruz, a reviewer in the literary journal Your Impossible Voice. “The book revisits Gundy’s usual catalog of subjects—small-town life in the Midwest, nature, Mennonites, being on the road, and so on—but these themes remain fresh under his deft touch,” Cruz continues. “Gundy is a poet of the people in that his poems examine everyday life in a way that elevates it to the sublime.” 

The Bluffton professor has published six books of poems and four of prose. He has been a major organizer of the Mennonite/s Writing conferences, and his work appears regularly in periodicals, including Mennonite Quarterly Review, Conrad Grebel Review, The Georgia Review and The Kenyon Review.