Hosted By Lifetime Learning
Jan 6, 2027, 3-4PM EST
Virtual Event, Free, and Open to All
You are invited to an early celebration of Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday and a fascinating exploration of his life, literature, and enduring legacy. Richard Kopley, author of Edgar Allan Poe: A Life (UVA Press 2025), will join Cristina Richieri Griffin and Matt Martello of the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences for a lively conversation about one of America’s most influential and enigmatic writers. These scholars will examine the experiences, ideas, and innovations that made Poe a literary force in the nineteenth century and why his works continue to captivate readers, scholars, and popular culture today.
Faculty Speakers
Cristina Griffin (moderator), Assistant Professor of English, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Managing Director of Center for the Liberal Arts, Academic Outreach in the Office of the Provost
Dr. Cristina Richieri Griffin is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she specializes in nineteenth-century and gothic literature, and co-directs (with Prof. Kirsten Gelsdorf) Poe at UVA, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also Managing Director of UVA’s Center for the Liberal Arts, which provides professional development for K–12 teachers. Her publications have appeared in nineteenth-century scholarly journals as well as Norton anthologies and Oxford handbooks, and she leads three additional public humanities initiatives: the UVA Reading Collaborative (with Prof. Kirsten Gelsdorf), an initiative to revitalize University reading culture; Teaching Literature for Liberty, a nationwide resource for K–12 English language arts and social studies teachers; and Project Gothic, a digital companion to the world’s largest archive of gothic fiction, which is housed in UVA’s Special Collections.
Richard Kopley, Virginia Humanities Fellow Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, Penn State DuBois and Poe’s most recent biographer
Richard Kopley, Distinguished Professor of English, Penn State, Emeritus, is the author of the University of Virginia Press's biography of Edgar Allan Poe, titled Edgar Allan Poe: A Life. He has also published The Threads of The Scarlet Letter: A Study of Hawthorne's Transformative Art, Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries, and The Formal Center in Literature: Explorations from Poe to the Present. He has been president of the Poe Studies Association and the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society. Kopley has served as a Virginia Humanities Fellow and a Fulbright Specialist. He has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Poe Studies Association. His recent Poe biography received both a Patrick F. Quinn Award from the Poe Studies Association and an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
Matthew Martello, College Advising Fellow in Arts & Sciences
Matthew Martello holds a PhD in English from the University of Virginia, where he is now an Advising Fellow and Lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences. He teaches and writes about British and American literature from the late-eighteenth century to the present. His research has been published in various academic journals, including Narrative and American Literary Realism. He is also a poet whose poems have appeared in periodicals such as Kestrel and The Fourth River.