Award-Winning Poet to Give Reading at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — Martín Espada, professor of creative writing and Latino poetry at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will read his poetry on Thursday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m. in Lecture Center 100 on the SUNY New Paltz campus. This event, featuring the man many consider “the Latin poet of his generation,” is free and open to the public.

Espada is the author of five books of poetry, most recently A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (W.W. Norton, 2000). A 1996 collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (W.W. Norton), was awarded the American Book Award that year. Espada has also been given the Paterson Poetry Prize.

A book of his essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End Press, 1998), received the 1999 Independent Publisher Book Award in the category of Creative Nonfiction/Memoir.

Espada has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the PEN/Revson Foundation.

He was born in Brooklyn in 1947. Much of his writing arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging in title from bouncer to tenant lawyer. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Espada’s work provides a “poetic uplift in the face of everyday oppression.”

The morning following his reading, Espada will conduct a poetry workshop for New Paltz students. It will be held in the university’s Honors Center, located in College Hall, beginning at 11 a.m. The public is welcome.

Espada’s visit to the university is sponsored by the William Vasse Poetry Series in conjunction with the SUNY New Paltz Poetry Board.

For more information, please contact Pauline Uchmanowics, assistant professor in the English Department at New Paltz, at (845) 257-2755.