Stan Rice, a poet, artist and longtime SFSU professor, will be remembered during a Monday, Feb. 3, memorial tribute sponsored by the Poetry Center. The tribute begins at noon in the Humanities Auditorium, room 133 of the Humanities building. A reception will follow the event.

A former chair of the Creative Writing Department, Rice died Dec. 9, 2002, in New Orleans, after a four-month battle with cancer. He was 60.

Rice and his wife, author Anne Rice, came to San Francisco in the 1960s. They were both SFSU alumni, and Stan spent some time as assistant director of the Poetry Center in the 1970s.

He taught at SFSU for 22 years before retiring to New Orleans, where he concentrated on painting and poetry and opened the Stan Rice Gallery in 1999.

Mark Linenthal, professor emeritus of English and creative writing, is one of several scheduled speakers at the tribute. Rice was a student in Linenthal’s class years before they were colleagues in the Creative Writing Department and Poetry Center.

Linenthal spoke highly of Rice’s artistic talents, administrative skills, and “mysterious” temperament.

“There was something perpetually elusive about Stan,” Linenthal said. “He was very serious, very talented, very energetic ... and utterly his own man.”

Rice was a prolific writer, with seven books to his name and an eighth, “False Prophet,” to be published this year. He’s also the recipient of the Edgar Allen Poe Award of the Academy of America Poets, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award and a writing fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Friends, faculty and fellow poets will remember Rice. Former Poetry Center directors Linenthal and Kathleen Fraser, Rice’s sister-in-law Tamara Tinker and others will read his poems.

For details, call (415) 338-2227.