Fernando Operé, Fernando Riva, & Fernando Valverde

Join us for a reading with poets Fernando Operé, Fernando Riva, and Fernando Valverde. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.

Fernando Operé is a Spanish poet, historian, professor at the University of Virginia since 1980, and citizen of the world. He is also a theater director, with a long history directing theater in Virginia (Historia de un escenario. 40 años de teatro en español en la Universidad de Virginia, 2020). He is the author of several books of history: En el nombre del padre: crónica de la España de Franco a la América de Trump (2022); España y las luchas por la modernidad (2018); Relatos de cautivos en las Américas desde Canadá a la Patagonia, siglos XVI al XX (2016); and sixteen books of poetry, most recently: No todo será perdonado (2022), El vigilante (2022), La imprudencia de vivir (2018), Pureza demolida (2017), and Liturgia del atardecer (2016).

Fernando Riva (Lima, 1979) is a professor at the University of Virginia, where he teaches medieval Castilian and Mediolatin literature. He received his PhD from Yale in 2017, and his articles have appeared in prestigious publications such as Hispanic ReviewRomance NotesRomance Quarterly, and Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, among others. He is the author of the book Nunca mayor sobervia comidió Luçifer: Límites del conocimiento y cultura claustral en el Libro de Alexandre (Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, 2019), and is working on the completion of Books of Secret Wisdom: The Development of Magic in the Iberian Peninsula (Castile and Aragon, 1106–1428), to be published in spring 2024. Extensión de la gracia is his first book of poetry.

Fernando Valverde is one of the preeminent poets writing in the Spanish language today, and he has received international acclaim for his contributions to the art of poetry. Before coming to the US, Valverde served as a foreign correspondent for Spain’s major paper, El Pais, covering war zones in the Balkans and the Middle East. In 2014, his book The Insistence of Harm received the Book of the Year award from the Latino American Writers Institute at CUNY. His most recent bilingual book, America, was translated by poet Carolyn Forché and published by Copper Canyon Press. In Spanish, Los hombres que mataron a mi madre (Visor) is his most recent book. He has also published La Muerte de Adonais, with the prestigious publishing house Planeta and UNAM, on the life and death of Percy B. Shelley. He has been the director of the International Festival of Poetry in Granada, and he is currently a professor of poetry and Romanticism at the University of Virginia.