Students, faculty, and alumni from Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, are paying tribute in New York City this week to Dorothea Tanning, a Knox alumnus, Galesburg native and noted author and Surrealist artist. Knox's New York Alumni Club presents readings of Tanning's poetry and prose Friday, March 3, at 8 p.m., in the Blue Mahoe Restaurant, 234 E. 14th St. in Greenwich Village. Reservations can be made at 309-341-7238.

Readers will include several Knox alumni -- actors Amy Carlson and Caitlin Muelder; and writers and editors Sally Arteseros, Jack Brown, Joe Lennon, and Sean Mills.

Knox College faculty members participating will include Marilyn Webb, co-director of the Journalism Program and former editor of Psychology Today; theatre professor Elizabeth Carlin-Metz, who directed one of the Chicago Reader's Top Ten Plays of 2004; and English professor Robin Metz, an award-winning poet and director of Knox's Program in Creative Writing.

Several current Knox students also will participate in the event -- Sylvie Davidson, Al Keefe, Adam Krause, JoAnna Novak, Brendan Todt, and Sarah Wylder.

Also at the event, pianist Sean Mills and singer Renee Favand will perform a new work by composer Stefan Weisman, based on Tanning's poetry.

Born in Galesburg, Tanning attended Knox College (1928-1930) and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her Surrealist paintings and sculptures are held in collections worldwide and, according to publisher W.W. Norton, "rank among the most inventive of any living American artist." She received an honorary doctorate from Knox College in 1988.

Tanning also has written a critically acclaimed poetry collection, A Table of Contents; a novel, Chasm; and an autobiography, Between Lives, which details her life in Galesburg, New York, France and Arizona, and her long marriage to the late surrealist artist Max Ernst.

A video biography of Tanning and Ernst was released in 1991 by Home Vision of Canada, and she was profiled in 2004 in The New Yorker.