Dolores Dorantes and Raquel Salas Rivera write with ferocious beauty, using language with all the strength of its transformative potential to invoke and enact a world rewritten, literally decolonized, returned to life, free. Please join us to celebrate Rivera’s latest book, Antes Que Isla Es Volcán, and Dorantes’s Copy, translated by Robin Myers, who will also join us to read.
Dolores Dorantes is the Executive Director of Mujer Migrante, publisher of Hoja Frugal and Acharya in the Buddhist tradition, a journalist, writer, therapist, poet, performer, and sacred animal. She is a Mexican born in the mountains of Veracruz in 1973 but raised in Ciudad Juárez, right next door to El Paso, which is just across the US border. In 2011, she fled her country and was granted political asylum in Los Angeles. Dorantes is Black and Nahua Indigenous on her mother's side, Spaniard and mestiza on her father's side. Recent books translated into English are The River, a collaboration with the artist Zoe Leonard, and Style. Her socio-cultural writings and political-social reflections, along with the majority of her books, are part of the commons at www.doloresdorantes.blogspot.com. She believes in a United Latin America.
Robin Myers is a poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Her latest translations include Copy by Dolores Dorantes (Wave Books), The Dream of Every Cell by Maricela Guerrero (Cardboard House Press), Tonight: The Great Earthquake by Leonardo Teja (PANK Books), and The Book of Explanations by Tedi López Mills (Deep Vellum Publishing). As a poet, her work has recently been published in The Drift, Poetry London, Denver Quarterly, Yale Review, Guesthouse, and selected for the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology. She lives in Mexico City.
Raquel Salas Rivera es un poeta, traductor y editor puertorriqueño. Sus reconocimientos incluyen el nombramiento como Poeta Laureado de la ciudad de Filadelfia, el Premio Nuevas Voces, el Premio Literario Lambda, el inaugural Premio Ambroggio, la beca de Poeta Laureado y una beca del NEA para la traducción de la poesía de su abuelo, Sotero Rivera Avilés. Es el autor de seis poemarios y fue el coeditor de la antología de poesía puertorriqueña, Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), múltiples folios y la revista literaria The Wanderer. En el 2022, participará en el Whitney Museum of American Art en no existe mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, cuyo título proviene de un verso del poemario while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds, LLC, 2019). Obtuvo un Doctorado en Literatura Comparada y Teoría Literaria de la Universidad de Pensilvania y vive, enseña y escribe en Puerto Rico, donde también trabaja como investigador y supervisor del equipo de traducción para El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña/ The Puerto Rican Literature Project (PRLP), un portal digital bilingüe y de libre acceso que usuarios pueden utilizar para conocer y enseñar la poesía puertorriqueña.
Raquel Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet, translator, and editor. His honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the New Voices Award from the Festival de la Palabra, the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, the inaugural Ambroggio Prize, the Laureate Fellowship, and a NEA Fellowship to translate the poetry of his grandfather, Sotero Rivera Avilés. He is the author of six full-length poetry books and has co-edited the anthology, Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), various folios, and the literary journal The Wanderer. In 2022, he will participate in no existe mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria at the Whitney Museum of American Art, whose title borrows a verse his fourth poetry book while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds, LLC, 2019). He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and lives, teaches, and writes in Puerto Rico, where he also works as investigator and head of the translation team for El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña / The Puerto Rican Literature Project (PRLP), a free, bilingual, user-friendly and open access digital portal that anyone can use to learn about and teach Puerto Rican poetry.
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