Announcements, Events

Join Us for Women’s Poetry Conference

The English Department has proudly partnered with the Department of Spanish and Portuguese to co-sponsor Abril pa’ la palabra, an annual women’s poetry conference organized by Carmen Holguín-Chaparro.

This year marks the eighth annual conference and features poet and activist Lilvia Soto, who is the author of the most recent collection, Lies of an Indispensable Nation: Poems About the American Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, published in October 2022 by Atmosphere Press. She will read from and present the book, with a conversation led by Paolo Durta and Héctor Contreras.

The book presentation will be on Thursday, April 20 at 5pm in Ortega Hall 335, followed by a brown bag lecture entitled, “War Poetry: Who Writes It? Who Reads It?” on Friday, April 21 at 12pm in Humanities 108.

The conference is free and open to the public. All are invited and welcome.

Other featured writers in this conference will include Carmen Amato, Lilly Blake, Dinorah Gutiérrez-Aldana, Ana Gabriela Hernández, Margarita Muñoz, Ruby Myers, Virginia Ordoñez, Veilka Solano, and Sylvia Vergara.

For a complete list of scheduled events during the conference, please visit: http://spanport.unm.edu/happenings/abril-para-la-palabra/upcoming-abril-para-la-palabra.html

Lilvia Soto was born in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico and immigrated to the United States at the age of 15. She received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature from Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York. She has taught Spanish American literature at Harvard and other American universities and is active in numerous international poetry festivals and literary conferences. Soto is the author of two collections of bilingual poetry, bajo las palabras / under the words and Lengua lanzadera enhebrada / Tongue Threaded Shuttle, published by Editorial Garabatos in Sonora, Mexico. One poem from her most recent collection, Lies of an Indispensable Nation, has received a prestigious nomination for a Pushcart Prize. Soto has also published short fiction, literary criticism, and literary translations in journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada, Spain, India, Mexico, and other Latin American countries. These other publications include an anthology in Spanish out of Chihuahua Arde Editoras in Mexico City and essays on Spanish, Spanish American, Chicano and Latino writers in the United States. Soto is an active member of the art collective We Are You Project International, as well as the Castro Poets and other poetry collectives in Mexico. She currently resides in Philadelphia. To learn more about Lilvia’s work, visit www.lilviasoto.com.

For questions about the conference, please contact Carmen Holguín-Chaparro, cjhch@unm.edu or Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, mviz@unm.edu.