A lively and popular speaker, Randall will read from her most recent book of poetry, "Hunger's Table: Women, Food and Politics," on Sunday, Nov. 2, at 2 p.m. in Hallwalls, Suite 425, Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main St. Admission to the reading is $4-$6 at the door.

In addition, she is presenting a free public lecture titled "The Imagination of the Writer vs. The Imagination of the State" at 9:45 a.m. today in the faculty lounge, 545 O'Brian Hall on the North Campus.

Randall's trip to Buffalo is sponsored by the Law School, the Samuel F. Capen Chair in Poetry and the Humanities (Robert Creeley), Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, the Sociology Department, the James McNulty Chair in English (Dennis Tedlock), the Program in Women's Studies, Just Buffalo Literary Center and Hallwalls.

"Hunger's Table" has been hailed by critics as a primary women's text that offers a brilliant discussion of the political, social and emotional roles that food plays in our lives and in our thinking about the world.

In 1984, Randall's outspoken political views led to a five-year fight by the administration to deport her as an enemy of the state.

Her critical writings on U.S. foreign policy, particularly in Vietnam and Central America, earned her widespread praise from the scholars and readers, but outrage and political rebuke from the Reagan administration, which declared her ideas ideologically antipathetic to the U.S. government. In 1984, it ordered the American-born Randall deported, placing her at the center of a major political controversy.

Randall's deportation cause was taken up by the American intellectual community, which, with a groundswell of support from American citizens, helped her to win her legal case in 1989 after a five-year court battle.

Since that time, she has continued her work as an activist, teacher, writer and oral historian. Her work has been the subject of many essays, interviews, newspaper and journal articles, as well as of several doctoral dissertations and other scholarly studies. She is an international lecturer of distinguished reputation.