Celebrity Series of Boston will present poet Billy Collins and singer-songwriter Aimee Mann on Saturday, November 21, 2015, at 8:00pm at Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge

(Boston) Celebrity Series of Boston will present poet Billy Collins and singer-songwriter Aimee Mann on Saturday, November 21, 2015, at 8:00pm at Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge.

Tickets start at $35, and are available online at www.celebrityseries.org, by calling CelebrityCharge at (617) 482-6661 Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m., or at the Harvard Box Office, Holyoke Center, 1350 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.

This performance marks the Celebrity Series debut for both Collins and Mann.

Billy Collins was appointed United States Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and New York State Poet Laureate 2004-2006. His work has appeared in a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The American Scholar, he is a Guggenheim fellow and a New York Public Library “Literary Lion.” His last three collections of poems have broken sales records for poetry. His readings are usually standing room only, and his audience – enhanced tremendously by his appearances on National Public Radio – includes people of all backgrounds and age groups.

Billy Collins has published ten collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems, Nine Horses, The Trouble With Poetry, and Other Poems, Ballistics, Horoscopes for the Dead and Picnic, Lightning. A collection of his haiku, She Was Just Seventeen, was published by Modern Haiku Press in fall 2006. He has also published two chapbooks, Video Poems and Pokerface. He has edited two anthologies of contemporary poetry: Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, was the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2006, and edited Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, illustrated by David Allen Sibley. His most recent book, Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems 2003 – 2013, is a New York Times bestseller.

Included among the honors he has received are fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also been awarded the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize — all awarded by Poetry magazine. He has also received the Aiken-Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, The Hall-Kenyon Prize, and the Mailer Prize for Poetry. In 2004, Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry. His poems have been translated into numerous languages. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, as well as a Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College.

Singer-songwriter Aimee Mann is an American rock singer, bassist, and guitarist. Mann enrolled in Berklee College of Music in Boston in the late ‘70s and left to join the Boston punk band The Young Snakes. She was the co-founder, bassist, and vocalist for the band ‘Til Tuesday during the 1980s.

In 1985, ‘Til Tuesday released Voices Carry, which won the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist. In 1986, the band released Welcome Home, their second album. In 1993, Mann released her debut solo album, Whatever, followed by I’m with Stupid in 1995. In 1999, Mann recorded original material for the soundtrack to the Paul Thomas Anderson film Magnolia, which earned both Academy Award and Grammy Award nominations for the song “Save Me.” She also founded her own label, SuperEgo Records. Mann then released Bachelor No. 2 (2000), Lost in Space (2002), Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse (2004), and The Forgotten Arm (2005), a concept album set in the 1970s which received a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package for the album’s artwork. In 2006, Mann released One More Drifter in the Snow and @#%&*! Smilers in 2008 which features Grammy-nominated artwork by Gary Taxali. 2012 saw the release of Charmer, which features a duet with James Mercer of The Shins. In 2013, Mann and Ted Leo started playing together in a collaborative project called #BOTH and released their first album, The Both, in 2014.

Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. Over the course of its 77-year history, Celebrity Series has presented an array of the world’s greatest performing artists, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini, Ignace Paderewski, Artur Rubenstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Andrés Segovia, Kirsten Flagstad, Marian Anderson, Luciano Pavarotti, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Martha Graham, Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the New York City Opera Company.

The Celebrity Series has been bringing the very best performers–from orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, and more–to Boston’s major concert halls for 77 years. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its education initiatives, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience–on stages, in schools, at home– everywhere. For more information on Celebrity Series of Boston, call (617) 482-2595 or visit us online at www.celebrityseries.org.

The Celebrity Series of Boston, Inc. receives generous support from Amy & Joshua Boger; Deloitte LLP; Donna & Mike Egan; Gabor Garai & Susan Pravda; The Garbis & Arminé Barsoumian Charitable Foundation; Stephanie L. Brown Foundation; David & Harriet Griesinger; Charles and Cerise Jacobs Charitable Foundation; Paul L. King; Jann Leeming & Arthur Little; The Royal Little Family Foundation; Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation; Stewart Myers; Eleanor & Frank Pao; Rafanelli Events; The John S. and Cynthia Reed Foundation; Stifler Family Foundation; Sanjay & Sangeeta Verma; Nancy Richmond Winsten; Charlesbank Capital Partners LLC; EMC; Foley & Lardner LLP; Massachusetts Cultural Council; National Endowment for the Arts; The Catered Affair; The Peabody Foundation; PTC; Tufts Health Plan; The D.L. Saunders Real Estate Corp.; Vertex Pharmaceuticals.