Sandra Marchetti, this semester’s first RopeWalk Reading Series writer, began writing when she was in fourth grade after she won second place in a story competition.

The university brings in two or three writers for the series each semester to meet with students, lead workshops and read some of their works.

Marchetti will read from her collection of poems “Confluence” and a collaborative chapbook of love poems titled “Heart Radicals.”

Her parents were her biggest supporters growing up, Marchetti said. They read to her and made up stories for her.

“We had an imaginary society of elves living in our house,” she said. “The elves even had their own jail.”

When she writes, Marchetti said, she makes herself some coffee and ensures that her work desk as well as the rest of the house is clean.

“I am an obsessive reviser, so most poems go through many dozen drafts before I consider them near done,” she said. “Since I don’t write as often as I would like, I hardly ever throw anything out. All scraps eventually become poems because they are so precious and rarely received.”

Marchetti compared the writing process to engineering.

“If you want to engineer an object well, it’s incredibly difficult,” she said.

The RopeWalk Reading Series was named after an actual ropewalk which sits on the outside of the eastern cemetery wall in New Harmony.

The RopeWalk Writers Retreat, the annual university writers’ conference, has been held in New Harmony for more than 20 years, English Instructor Ron Mitchell said. The RopeWalk Reading Series began in 1999 as an extension of that conference.

The term “rope walk” comes from an old method locals in New Harmony used to make rope.

The Harmonists grew hemp and would stretch it out to dry along the 1,100-foot walk, the RopeWalk Reading Series coordinator said. Then they would twist it together into rope.

Well-known writers such as Nikki Giovanni have visited campus for this series as well as newer emerging writers, Stephen Spencer, another coordinator, said.

Adam Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize not long after attending the series.

The English Department Chair’s favorite part of the series is hearing the writers read their works in their own voices, he said.

“It makes enjoying their work a richer experience,” Spencer said. “The writers are so dynamic.”

Fast Facts

Time: 4:30-5:30 p.m. Feb. 25

Location: Traditions Lounge, University Center

Cost: Free