Latinx Voices in Poetry: Rio Cortez, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month with an evening of poetry and conversation featuring an all-star panel of Latinx poets. Co-hosted with Latinx in Publishing.

Featuring:

• Rio Cortez, author of Golden Ax and The ABCs of Black History


• Darrel Alejandro Holnes, author of Stepmotherland & Migrant Psalms


• Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, author of Madness and Losing Miami


• Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You and Peluda
  

Co-presented with Latinx in Publishing, a network of book professionals committed to supporting and increasing the number of Latino/a/x in the publishing industry, as well as promoting literature by, for, and about Latino/a/x people.

To join this event in-person | Please be sure to register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form shortly before the program.

To join the livestream | A livestream of this event will be available on the NYPL event page. To receive an email reminder shortly in advance of the event, please be sure to register!

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Rio Cortez was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The ABCs of Black History (Workman, 2020) and I Have Learned to Define a Field As a Space Between Mountains, winner of the 2015 Toi Dericotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Her honors include a Poets & Writers Amy Award, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, Canto Mundo, The Jerome Foundation, and Poet’s House. Rio holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American writer. His plays have received productions or readings at the Kennedy Center for the Arts American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), The Brick Theater, Kitchen Theater Company, Pregones Theater/PRTT, Primary Stages, and elsewhere. He is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, Civilians R&D Group, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Workshop, and other groups. His play, Starry Night, was a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference and the Princess Grace Award in Playwriting. His play Bayano was also a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. His most recent play, Black Feminist Video Game, was produced by The Civilians for 59E59, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Center Theater Group, and other theaters and venues and won an inaugural Anthem Award. He is the founder of the Greater Good Commission and Festival, a festival of Latinx short plays. Holnes is the author of Migrant Psalms (Northwestern University Press, 2021) and Stepmotherland (Notre Dame Press, 2022). He is the recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize from Letras Latinas, the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry). His poem "Praise Song for My Mutilated World" won the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize from Poetry International. He is an assistant professor of English at Medgar Evers College, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), and a faculty member at New York University. For more information visit www.darrelholnes.com

Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué is a poet and writer living in Chicago. He is most recently the author of Madness and Losing Miami, which was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. He is also co-editor of An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989. He is currently a PhD student in English at the University of Chicago where he works in the study of sexuality.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a nationally recognized writer and performer. She is the author of the poetry chapbook peluda. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Breakbeat Poets Vol 4: Latinext, Redivider, Wax Nine, the Poetry Project. Lozada-Oliva has been featured in Audible, Glamour Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, BBC Mundo, and other media outlets. She earned her MFA from NYU.

CONNECT

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Rio Cortez © Paul Tran

Darrel Alejandro Holnes © Beowulf Sheehan