Poetry Reading & Conversation featuring Dolores Dorantes, author of Copy (Wave Books, 2022), and Marwa Helal, author of Ante body (Nightboat Books, 2022). Curated and hosted by Lynn Xu, author of And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave, 2022). Presented as part of our series Unwriting Borders with support from the NEA.
Dolores Dorantes is the Executive Director of Mujer Migrante, publisher of Hoja Frugal, 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 Copy (Wave Books, 2022), The River, a collaboration with the artist Zoe Leonard (Gato Negro Ediciones, 2019), and Style (Kenning Editions, 2016). 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.
Marwa Helal is a poet and journalist. She is the author of Ante body (Nightboat Books, 2022), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), the chapbook I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No Dear, 2017) and a Belladonna chaplet (2021). She has been awarded fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, New York Foundation of the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Poets House, and Cave Canem, among others. Helal is the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest, selected by Bhanu Kapil. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, Boston Review, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018. She has presented her work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim Museum. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, she currently lives in the United States.
Born in Shanghai, Lynn Xu is the author of And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave, 2022) and Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) and the chapbooks: June (Corollary Press, 2006) and Tournesol (Compline, 2021). She has performed cross-disciplinary works at the MOCA Tucson, Guggenheim Museum, The Renaissance Society, Rising Tide Projects, and 300 S. Kelly Street. She teaches at Columbia University, co-edits Canarium Books, and lives with her family in New York City and West Texas.