The Friends of the Brown Memorial Library are sponsoring An Evening with Donald Hall, New Hampshire Poet Laureate, on Wednesday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m. in the First Baptist Church, Bradford, N.H. The event will benefit the Library Building Fund. Friends President, Audrey Sylvester, said, "We are honored that Donald Hall will come to Bradford for an event supporting our town library. We wish we could hold the program in the library, but it is too small. We look forward to a festive literary evening."

Donald Hall, now an internationally renowned poet and writer, came to New Hampshire in 1975 with his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, to Eagle Pond Farm (a house where his grandparents had lived) in Danbury, N.H. Hall's New Hampshire farm continues to inspire his writing whether as subject matter for poetry (Old and New Poems), prose (String Too Short to Be Saved), or stories for children (Lucy's Christmas and The Farm Summer 1942).

Donald Hall is the author of more than 13 books of verse, 19 books of prose and anthologies, and editor for numerous publications. Hall has received numerous awards for his writing - a National Book Critics Circle Award; Robert Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America; Sarah Josepha Hale Award; New England Book Award in non-fiction; and in 1994, the Lily Prize for Poetry. One of his children's books, The Ox-Cart Man, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, won a 1980 Caldecott Award.

In 1995, he was recognized as a Living Treasure/Governor's Awards in the Arts, as "being a gifted and giving man who celebrates New Hampshire through his poems and writings of the hills, stone wall, Eagle Pond, the church fairs - with tenderness, wit and a shimmering precision - for sharing that gift so generously with the New Hampshire community."

The library benefit, An Evening with Donald Hall, will be followed by a reception and book signing. Book sales by Gibson's Bookstore will benefit the Library Building Fund. Admission: $10.00 (tax-deductible); $5.00 (seniors, students & starving artists). The First Baptist Church (wheelchair accessible) is located on West Main Street (at Route 103) in Bradford, N.H. To reserve tickets and for more information, contact Friends President Audrey Sylvester at 938-5908.