Upcoming Events

Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to all!

Visiting Writer Series at Pacific Lutheran University
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Writer's Life Talk at 3:30 pm
Garfield Book Company
208 S Garfield Street
Tacoma, Washington 98444
Reading from No Word for Welcome at 7:00 pm
PLU University Center
Tacoma, Washington 98447
In the fall of 2008, I taught my first semester of university classes at PLU. Most of my students were also in their first semester. In Spring 2012 those students will graduate from PLU--so I'm particularly thrilled to be part of PLU's Visiting Writer Series in the spring. I will also give a one-hour writing workshop at lunchtime for PLU's creative writing student group, "The Mark."

Visiting Writer Series
University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin
Monday, February 27, 2012
7:30 pm
I will visit nonfiction writing classes that use both Telling True Stories and No Word for Welcome as class texts, thanks to Douglas Haynes, whose socially engaged writing about Nicaragua I much admire.

"Taking Up Residence: Writers in Unexpected Places"
A Panel Discussion with Wendy Call, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Henry Reese, and Ellen Placey Wadey
Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Annual Conference
Lake Ontario Room, 8th Floor, Hilton Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois
Thursday, March 1, 2012
12:00 to 1:15 pm
I've gathered some of the writer-activists I most respect for a lively session on how to be a Writer in Residence outside the (very comfortable and wonderful) boxes of the university and the artist colony. This group has participated in and/or managed Writer in Residence programs in city neighborhoods, public high schools, county hospitals, national parks, libraries, historical archives, and many other unexpected places. Later in the afternoon I will be signing books at the University of Nebraska Press booth at the bookfair. This event is open only to participants in the AWP Conference.

Reading, Slideshow, and Discussion
CHICLE Language Institute
101 East Weaver Street, Suite G-1, 3rd Floor
Carrboro, NC 27510
Monday, March 19, 2012
7:00 pm
Many thanks to this language and cultural center for hosting the first No Word for Welcome event in North Carolina. For more information about the event, call CHICLE at 919-933-0398.

Reading, Discussion, and Signing
Virginia Festival of the Book
Barnes & Noble
1035A Emmet Street
Charlottesville, Virginia
Thursday, March 22, 2012
I will share the stage with novelist Robert Sanabria at the first event for No Word for Welcome in Virginia, at one of the best festivals on the East Coast!

"Something Lost, Something Gained:
Translation and Multilingualism in a Globalized World"
Split This Rock Poetry Festival
venue TBA
Washington, DC
Saturday, March 24, 2012
9:30 am to 10:45 am
In this writing and translation workshop we will each explore our relationship to language loss–from the global to the personal levels. Linguists predict that half of the approximately six thousand languages currently spoken in the world will be extinct by the end of the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, many of us have lost the languages of our grandparents, because of racism and other forms of oppression in this country. Literary translation offers a positive response to these colossal losses, allowing English-only readers to appreciate literature produced in one (or more) of those other six thousand languages.  Experiments with translation–whether we consider ourselves multilingual or not–can expand our personal understanding of language diversity. Most of our time together will be devoted to individual and collaborative writing and translation exercises.

Artist in Residence Trilingual Poetry Reading
with poet Irma Pineda
Jack Straw Studios
4261 Roosevelt Way NE
Seattle, Washington 98105
tentatively planned for a date TBA in April 2012
7:00 pm
For more than a year I've been working on translations (Spanish to English) of delicious poems by the Zapotec-Mexican-Istmeña poet Irma Pineda. I am honored that Irma will come to Seattle to record a trilingual CD of her work with me, thanks to a generous Artist Support Grant from the Jack Straw Foundation. We will end Irma's week in Seattle with a Zapotec-Spanish-English poetry reading and isthmus-style pachanga.

Get LIt! Literary Festival
Reading with Aaron Bobrow-Strain
4:30 to 5:30 pm
Riverpoint Campus, Phase 1 Auditorium, Room 122
Eastern Washington University
Spokane, Washington
I will also offer a Saturday-morning workshop at this literary festival -- one of Northwest's best literary events. (See my "teaching" page for information on the workshop.) The theme for Get Lit! 2012 is "Capture the World," and the genre focus is "crime fiction." Hmmm. I can see how No Word for Welcome fits both these themes.

National Book Prize Reading from No Word for Welcome
The Muse and the Marketplace Conference
presented by Grub Street
Saturday, May 5, 2012
8:15 pm
Boston Park Plaza Hotel
50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street
Boston, Massachusetts
Thanks to the great honor of having won Grub Street's 2011 National Book Prize for Nonfiction, I will give a reading (Saturday evening) with Fiction Prize Winner Eileen Pollack and teach a craft class (Saturday afternoon) at Grub Street's 2012 writers' conference. The craft class is open only to participants in the Muse and the Marketplace Conference. The evening reading is free and open to the public.

Please see my "teaching" page for information about writing conferences where I will be teaching / presenting in 2012.

See past events here.