WINSTON-SALEM – A poem by Joseph Robert “Joe” Mills, a University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) faculty member, will be featured on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” on Sept. 6.

The poem, titled “The Guardian,” is from Mills’ book “Love and Other Collisions,” published in March by Press 53.

Keillor, perhaps best known as the host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” also hosts a daily feature called “The Writer’s Almanac” on public radio stations around the country. The programs, about five minutes long, feature Keillor reading poems, prose and literary history. Both programs are available via American Public Media. For more information, including public radio stations that carry “The Writer’s Almanac,” visit the website at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/. “The Writer’s Almanac” is also available via podcast and newsletter.

Keillor will be in Winston-Salem on Sunday, Nov. 14, to give two performances -- at 4 and 7:30 p.m. -- of his highly acclaimed one-man show, “Lake Wobegon Days.” The performances are presented by the Stevens Center of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. For tickets, call the UNCSA Box Office at 336-721-1945 or visit www.uncsa.edu/performances.

This summer, Joe Mills was named the first recipient of The Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in Humanities in the Undergraduate Academic Program at UNCSA. Mills joined the school in 1998, and teaches Humanities and Writing courses. His published work includes poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism. He has published three volumes of poetry with Press 53: “Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers,” “Somewhere During the Spin Cycle,” and, most recently, “Love and Other Collisions.” He and his wife, Danielle Tarmey, are the authors of “A Guide to North Carolina’s Wineries” (John F. Blair, Publisher). The second edition was released in 2007. Mills edited “A Century of the Marx Brothers,” and has written for Latitude magazine and Small Winery Magazine. He is the Poet-in-Residence at Salem College.

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of Arts and Innovation”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from high school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. UNCSA is located at 1533 S. Main St., Winston-Salem. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

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