Poets & Writers Theater

“What I’m hoping is, ten years from now, a young Puerto Rican poet on the island or somewhere else knows that this is a possibility, that living a life with and through poetry is an honorable way of engaging with the world.” Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, the first Latino executive director and president of the Academy of American Poets, reflects on why he began writing and the importance of expanding the linguistic diversity of poetry in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown.

In this London Review Bookshop event, Fernanda Melchor reads from her novel Paradais (New Directions, 2022), translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes, and discusses her work and signature writing style with author Nicole Flattery.

“It’s about memory, and love, and friendship,” says Sandra Cisneros in this short video introducing her first work of fiction in nearly a decade, Martita, I Remember You (Vintage, 2021), a novel about three women who travel to Paris to fulfill their dreams. The book comes in a dual-language edition with a Spanish translation by Liliana Valenzuela.

“In Spanish, our stories are slow, then fast, and we cackle constantly, even when we talk about the dead.” In this 2016 Radar Reading Series video, Ingrid Rojas Contreras reads from her memoir-in-progress about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia, and how she and her mother both experienced amnesia.

“I find myself on my feet with fifteen leaves. / Everything carries its own light on the walls.” In this Poetry Society of America video, poet and translator Ricardo Alberto Maldonado reads his poem “Os doy mi corazón / I Give You My Heart” at Governor’s Island in New York. Maldonado’s debut poetry collection, The Life Assignment, is forthcoming in 2020 from Four Way Books.

Yuri Herrera reads from his debut novel, Kingdom Cons (Faber & Faber, 2012), translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman, at a 2012 Litquake event at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. Herrera's second novel, Signs Preceding the End of the World (And Other Stories, 2015), also translated by Dillman, is the winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award in fiction.