We are excited to welcome the following poets!
To RSVP or learn more please email carecenter@carecenterholyoke.org
Jericho Brown
Thursday, September 29, 2022, 1pm
Wistariahurst Museum, 238 Cabot Street Holyoke, MA 01040
Jericho Brown is author of The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University.
Martín Espada
Wednesday, October 5, 1pm
Roque House, 210 Elm Street Holyoke, MA 01040
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957, Martín Espada is the author of more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. A former tenant lawyer in the Greater Boston area’s Latino community, he received a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1981 and a JD from Northeastern University in 1985. Espada published his first poetry collection, The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero (Waterfront Press), in 1982. Among his other books of poetry are Floaters (W. W. Norton, 2021), which received the National Book Award in Poetry in 2021; Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (W. W. Norton, 2016); The Trouble Ball (W. W. Norton, 2011), which was the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award, and an International Latino Book Award; The Republic of Poetry (W. W. Norton, 2006), which received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; and Imagine the Angels of Bread (W. W. Norton, 1996), winner of an American Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Espada has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2018, he received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, which recognizes distinguished poetic achievement. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.
Marilyn Chin
Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at 1pm
Virtual
Marilyn Chin is the award-winning poet and author of Rhapsody in plain yellow (2003), Hard Love Province (2014), and A Portrait of the Self As Nation (2018), among others. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon, Chin’s works have become Asian American classics and are taught in classrooms internationally. Contemporary Women Poets essayist Anne-Elizabeth Green observed, “The pains of cultural assimilation infuse [Chin’s] poems.” She is also the author of the novel Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (2009). In addition to writing poetry and fiction, she has translated poems by the modern Chinese poet Ai Qing and co-translated poems by the Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu.
Chin has read and taught workshops all over the world. Recently, she was guest poet at universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manchester, Sydney, Berlin, Iowa and elsewhere. She’s won numerous awards, including the United Artist Foundation Fellowship, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio, the Anisfield Wolf Book Award, two NEAs, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN/Josephine Miles Award, five Pushcart Prizes, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan.
She is featured in a variety of anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century Poetry, and The Best American Poetry.
She is Professor Emerita at San Diego State University and presently serves as a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets.
Joshua Bennett
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 1pm
Wistariahurst Museum, 238 Cabot Street Holyoke MA 01040
Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)—which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022) and Spoken Word: A Cultural History, which is forthcoming from Knopf. He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of English at Dartmouth College.
Alyssa Gaines, The 2022 National Youth Poet Laureate
Thursday, November 10, 2022 at 10am
United Congressional Church, 300 Appleton Street, Holyoke MA 01040
RSVP REQUIRED: carecenter@carecenterholyoke.org
Urban Word, the founding organization of the National Youth Poet Laureate Program, announced Alyssa Gaines as the 2022 National Youth Poet Laureate at a commencement program held at The Kennedy Center on May 20, 2022. Representing the Midwest Region, Gaines is the first-ever Indianapolis Youth Poet Laureate as supported by Voices Corp. Her work has been featured in Scholastic’s “Best Teen Writing,” the Indianapolis Recorder, and was published by Teach for America. A recent high school graduate, she served as a leader in her school as the President of the Black Student Union, the Poetry Club Founder and President, and the President of the nonpartisan Young Democrats Club. Her leadership also extends to work with Purdue University and the Center for Leadership Development. She also has performed in numerous theater productions and was the captain of the lacrosse team. Along with publishing her first book of poetry, Alyssa will be attending Harvard University in the Fall.
Matt Donovan
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 1pm
Wistariahurst Museum, 238 Cabot Street, Holyoke MA 01040
Matt Donovan is the author of two collections of poetry—Vellum (Mariner, 2007) and Rapture & the Big Bam (Tupelo Press , 2017)—as well as the nonfiction collection of lyric essays A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (Trinity University Press, 2016). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Believer, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Seneca Review, Threepenny Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. His piece “House of the Vettii” was selected as a notable essay for The Best American Essays 2013.
Donovan is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant, an NEA Fellowship in Literature, and the Larry Levis Reading Prize. He is currently collaborating on the chamber opera Inheritance about the life of Sarah Winchester.
Carrie Fountain
Tuesday, December 6, 2022 at 10am
The Care Center, 247 Cabot Street, Holyoke MA 01040
Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, and The New Yorker, among many others. Her first collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin Random House in 2014. Fountain’s debut novel for young adults, I’m Not Missing, was published in 2018 by Flatiron Books (Macmillan), and her first children’s book, The Poem Forest, about the life and legacy of poet and ecologist W.S. Merwin, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press. Her newest poetry collection, The Life, was published in May 2021 by Penguin. Fountain lives with her family in Austin and gives readings and teaches writing workshops across the country. In 2019, she was named Poet Laureate of the state of Texas.
Ross Gay
Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at 1pm
Virtual
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019. Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook “Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens,” in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, “River.” He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin’, in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.
Cheryl Boyce Taylor
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 1pm
Virtual
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet, author, and curator. Cheryl’s verse memoir, Mama Phife Represents, stands as a tribute to her late son, hip hop icon Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Alongside Mama Phife Represents, her four collections of poetry, Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing the Body, and Arrival, a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Award, present a lifetime dedicated to the written word. Cheryl’s latest work, We Are Not Wearing Helmets is scheduled for publication in 2022 by Northwestern University Press. In her community, she has judged poetry entries to The New York Foundation for the Arts and The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and facilitated poetry workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown: Evidence, A Dance Company. A VONA fellow, her work has been published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Pluck!, Killings Journal of Arts & Letters, and Adrienne. The recipient of the 2015 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, she is the founder and curator of the Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series. Cheryl earned an MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast: The University of Southern Maine, and an MSW from Fordham University. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.
Claire Meuschke
Monday, April 3, 2023 at 1pm
Virtual
Claire Meuschke is the author of Upend (Noemi Press), which was longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award. She received a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry from Stanford University (2019-2021) and has creative writing degrees from the University of Arizona (MFA) and Pratt Institute (BFA). She was born in San Francisco, CA and currently lives in Tucson, AZ. Dedicated to traditional foodways, land stewardship, and multigenerational community work, she has held positions at City Slicker Farms (Oakland, CA), Radical Family Farms (Sebastopol, CA), Las Milpitas Community Farm (Tucson, AZ), the US Forest Service (Carson National Forest, NM), and Southwest Youth Services (Albuquerque, NM). She has done editorial work for Honey Literary, Pleiades, Contra Viento, DIAGRAM, the Sonora Review, and Litmus Press.
Danusha Laméris
Thursday, April 6, 2023
Classroom Visit
Danusha Lamérisis a poet, teacher, and essayist. She is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, POETRY, and Ploughshares.
Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California, co-leads the Poetry of Resilience webinars with James Crews. She is on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.
Lynn Xu
Monday, June 5, 2023 at 1pm
Virtual
Born in Shanghai, poet Lynn Xu earned a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MFA at Brown University. She received a Catherine and William L. Magistretti Fellowship and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for her doctoral studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Influenced by surrealism, philosophy, and critical theory, Xu composes poems engaged with structure on an intimate level. Poet Ben Lerner, in his 2010 introduction to Xu’s work in the Boston Review describes Xu as an “expert at multiplying sites of resonance and ambiguity,” praising “Xu’s ability to make the poetic line a little theater where the belatedness of language is felt—and sometimes lulled into suspension.” Xu is the author of the poetry collections And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (2022) and Debts & Lessons (2013), which was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. In 2008 her work was featured in Best American Poetry and, in 2013, she was selected as a New American Poet at the Poetry Society of America. An editor for Canarium Books, Xu lives in Marfa, Texas with her husband, the poet, Joshua Edwards.
Terrance Hayes
Wednesday, September 6, 2023 at 12:30
Wistariahurst
Terrance Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections: So to Speak; American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and TS Eliot Prize; How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. His prose collection, To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. Hayes has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Whiting Foundation, and is a professor of English at New York University.
Ada Limón
Monday, September 25, 2023 at 1pm
Virtual
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is out now from Milkweed Editions. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States.
Ross Gay
Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 10am
Wistariahurst
Ross Gay is interested in joy.
Ross Gay wants to understand joy.
Ross Gay is curious about joy.
Ross Gay studies joy.
Something like that.
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.
Major Jackson
Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 1pm
The Care Center
Major Jackson is the author of six collections of poetry: Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems; The Absurd Man; Roll Deep; Holding Company; Hoops; and Leaving Saturn, which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and in Best American Poetry. He served as guest editor of Best American Poetry in 2019. Jackson is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress.
Ruth Forman
Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at 1PM
Virtual
Ruth Forman is the author of the board books Curls, Glow, Bloom and Ours (Simon & Schuster, 2020, 2021 & 2022). She is an award-winning author of the poetry collections Prayers Like Shoes (Whit, 2009), Renaissance (Beacon, 1997), and We Are the Young Magicians (Beacon, 1993) as well as the children’s book Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon (Children’s Book Press, 2007).
Ruth has received the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, The Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, The Durfee Artist Fellowship, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowships, the National Council of Teachers of English Notable Book Award, and recognition by The American Library Association. She provides writing workshops at retreats, schools and universities across the country and abroad, and has presented in forums such as the United Nations, the PBS series The United States of Poetry and National Public Radio.
Ruth is a former teacher of creative writing with the University of Southern California and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley, as well as a longtime faculty member with the VONA writing program. Also an MFA graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, she often collaborates on film, music, dance, theatre, art and media projects. She is currently a professor at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. When not writing and teaching, she practices a passion for martial arts: classical Yang family style tai chi chuan, tai chi sword, and bo staff. Ms. Forman currently lives in the Washington, DC area.
Ocean Vuong
Wednesday, November 29, 2023 at 1pm
Wistariahurst
Ocean Vuong is the author of The New York Times bestselling poetry collection, Time is a Mother (Penguin Press 2022), and The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press 2019), which has been translated into 37 languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize.
Vuong’s writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Granta, Harpers, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2016 100 Leading Global Thinker, Ocean was also named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers” and has been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” PBS NewsHour, Teen Vogue, Interview, Poets & Writers, and The New Yorker.
He currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and serves as a tenured Professor in the Creative Writing MFA Program at NYU.
Tiana Clark
Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at 1pm
The Care Center
Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award (Claremont Graduate University), a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of the 2021-2022 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship and 2019 Pushcart Prize. Clark is the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Clark is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A) and Tennessee State University (B.A.) where she studied Africana and Women’s studies. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere. She teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.
Kaveh Akbar
Wednesday, January 24, 2024 at 1pm
Odyssey Bookshop
Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics 2022). In 2024, Knopf will publish Martyr!, Kaveh’s first novel.
In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called “Poetry RX.”
Nathan McClain
Wednesday February 21, 2024 at 1pm
The Care Center
Nathan McClain was born and raised in the lower desert of Southern California. He is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017), a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Green Mountains Review, Guesthouse, The Common, and The Critical Flame, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American Literary Arts at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.
Jessica Jacobs
Monday March 25, 2024 at 1pm
The Care Center
Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, a memoir-in-poems of love and marriage, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry and one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the Year, and Pelvis with Distance, a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal, Jessica lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, with whom she co-authored Write It!, a collection of writing prompts from Spruce Books, an imprint of Penguin/RandomHouse. She is the founder of Yetzirah, an organization for Jewish poets, and unalone, her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2024.
Carrie Fountain
Monday April 1, 2024 at 1pm
Virtual
Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, and The New Yorker, among many others. Her first collection, Burn Lake, was a National Poetry Series winner. Her second collection, Instant Winner, was published by Penguin Random House in 2014. Fountain’s debut novel for young adults, I’m Not Missing, was published in 2018 by Flatiron Books (Macmillan), and her first children’s book, The Poem Forest, about the life and legacy of poet and ecologist W.S. Merwin, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press. Her newest poetry collection, The Life, was published in May 2021 by Penguin. Fountain lives with her family in Austin and gives readings and teaches writing workshops across the country. In 2019, she was named Poet Laureate of the state of Texas.
Martín Espada
Monday, June 3, 2024 at 1pm
The Care Center
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957, Martín Espada is the author of more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. A former tenant lawyer in the Greater Boston area’s Latino community, he received a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1981 and a JD from Northeastern University in 1985. Espada published his first poetry collection, The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero (Waterfront Press), in 1982. Among his other books of poetry are Floaters (W. W. Norton, 2021), which received the National Book Award in Poetry in 2021; Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (W. W. Norton, 2016); The Trouble Ball (W. W. Norton, 2011), which was the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award, and an International Latino Book Award; The Republic of Poetry (W. W. Norton, 2006), which received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; and Imagine the Angels of Bread (W. W. Norton, 1996), winner of an American Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Espada has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2018, he received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, which recognizes distinguished poetic achievement. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.
Ayana Mathis
Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 1pm
The Care Center
Ayana Mathis’s first novel, THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE (Knopf, 2012), was a New York Times Bestseller, second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, a 2013 New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, and was long listed for the Dublin Literary Award and nominated for Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Legacy Award. Mathis’s nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, RollingStone, Guernica and Glamour. Her work has been supported by the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She was a 2020-2021 American Academy in Berlin Prize Fellow. Mathis received her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to become the first African-American woman to serve as an assistant professor in that program. She currently teaches at Hunter College’s MFA Program.
