Syracuse Symposium^TM continues its “Networks” theme with a special program by Minnie Bruce Pratt and Martha Collins, award-winning poets and social activists.

Also part of the Visiting Author Reading Series of the YMCA Arts Branch’s Downtown Writers Center (DWC), the event is Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. at the DWC (340 Montgomery St., Syracuse). It is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Syracuse University Humanities Center or visit syracusehumanities.org.

The reading is co-sponsored by the DWC and the Humanities Center, the latter of which is based in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

“This is a special opportunity for the campus community,” says Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and associate professor of women’s & gender studies. “Minnie Bruce’s poetry shows us how theoretical and creative insights are most powerful when they are embedded within and speak to lived realities of everyday life. In turn, Martha’s precise and meditative language has addressed some of the most pressing social issues of our day, such as racism, immigration, and eugenics.”

Known for her groundbreaking work in women’s studies, Pratt retired earlier this year from Syracuse, where she helped establish the LGBT Studies Program, and held faculty positions in The Writing Program and Department of Women’s & Gender Studies. Pratt is the author of more than a dozen award-winning or critically acclaimed books, including The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) and Crime Against Nature (Firebrand Books, 1990). She also has published dozens of poems, essays, and articles, many of which have been anthologized.