Thursday, March 20 | 3 pm | Free
In celebration of the Latino Poetry Anthology from the Library of America.
Followed by a tour of salt 16: Arleene Correa Valencia with Emily Lawhead, UMFA’s associate curator of modern and contemporary art.
Join us for a reading by visiting poet Jose-Luis Moctezuma in celebration of the release of the Latino Poetry Anthology from the Library of America. Moctezuma will engage with the work of Arleene Correa Valencia’s salt 16 exhibition in his reading, which will feature his own poetry and selections from the Anthology. He will then be joined by Michael Mejia, Director of Creative Writing at the University of Utah, for a discussion about the intersections between Latino poetry and visual art. Following the reading and conversation, attendees will be invited to view Valencia’s exhibition and hear from Emily Lawhead, UMFA associate curator of modern and contemporary art.
This program is presented as part of Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home, a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025, directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.
Meet the Presenters:
Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a Xicano poet, essayist, and researcher. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago. His poetry and criticism have been published in Postmodern Culture, Peripheries, Modernism/modernity, Fence, Jacket2, Chicago Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Spring Tlaloc Seance, was published by Projective Industries in January 2016. His first full-length book, Place-Discipline, was published by Omnidawn in October 2018. Place-Discipline was selected by Myung Mi Kim as the winner of the 2017 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize. His second book, Black Box Syndrome, was published by Omnidawn in December 2023. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
Michael Mejia is the author of the novels TOKYO and Forgetfulness, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including AGNI, DIAGRAM, The Collagist, Seneca Review, and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, he is editor-in-chief of Western Humanities Review, co-founding editor of Ninebark Press, and the current director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Utah.
This program is presented in collaboration with the Creative Writing Program, Department of English at the University of Utah.