Witter Bynner Fellowship Poetry Reading by Monica Youn and Matthew Thorburn

Friday, October 24
7PM Carole Huxley Theatre, New York State Museum, Downtown Albany

U. S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic has chosen two New Yorkers for the Witter Bynner Prize of the Library of Congress. The prize was created in 1980 to support the work of young poets and “new voices in poetry.” The New York Center for the Book and the New York State Library are sponsoring a reading by this year’s honorees, Monica Youn and Matthew Thorburn.

A former Rhodes Scholar and Wallace Stegner Fellow, Monica Youn is a media and entertainment attorney at NYU Law School’s Brennan Center, as well as a creative writing instructor at Columbia University. Her collections include Barter (2003), and the forthcoming Ignatz, which is inspired by the mouse of the early 20th century comic strip, “Krazy Kat.” Her poems have appeared in numerous collections, including the Norton Anthology: Language for a New Century.

Matthew Thorburn, a business writer for an international law firm and founder of the little magazine Good Foot, is a past winner of the Mississippi Review Prize and the Belfast Poetry Festival’s first Festivo Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, and The American Poetry Review. His first collection, Subject to Change (2004), deals with the mutable nature of language, memory, and meaning in everyday life.

Tickets for Martin Espada available through Woodstock Poetry Society

Tickets for the reading by Martin Espada on November 22nd in Woodstock (see earlier Blog posting) can now be purchased through Paypal by going to the Woodstock Poetry Society website (www.woodstockpoetry.com), as well as at the Golden Notebook Bookstore, in Woodstock, and at the Phoenicia (NY) Pharmacy.

The Poet Essence and Mother Judge at Women for Obama Night of Unity

Join MotherJudge and the poet Essence for a free evening of music and more to be followed by the Presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain.
'Women for Obama,' a group of diverse women from throughout the Capital District, will host a night of unity and support for Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

All are welcome!

Essence & MotherJudge will start off the evening at 6PM.  Folding Sky, Rumdummies, The Last Conspirators, and improvisional skits by Albany-based theatre group Wit & Will round out the evening, with remarks by some of the Capital Region's prominent female Obama supporters.

In addition to enjoying an evening of free musical entertainment, poetry and theatre, attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about Obama's strong commitment to a variety of issues of deep importance to women as the 2008 presidential election draws near.  Stay to watch the Presidential debate that evening between Obama and Republican candidate John McCain on the Public House's large screen television.

For more information, contact Janet K. Kash (518)368-0354 or (518)756-9501  JanetKKash@aol.com

WOMEN FOR OBAMA NIGHT OF UNITY
Weds., October 15th, 6 to 9 PM
Pearl Street Public House (formerly Pagliacci's)
44 North Pearl Street
Downtown Albany (across from Times Union Center)
FREE - NO COVER

Martin Espada in Woodstock November 22nd

Martin Espada will be reading at the Kleinert/James Arts Center, 34 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY, on Saturday, November 22^nd at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $12 and are available at the Golden Notebook Bookstore, in Woodstock, and at the Phoenicia (NY) Pharmacy.

Martín Espada

Called“the Latino poet of his generation” and “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors,” Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published sixteen books in all as a poet, editor and translator. The Republic of Poetry, a collection of poems published by Norton in 2006, received the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Another collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other books of poetry include Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, the Charity Randall Citation, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Premio Fronterizo, two NEA Fellowships, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His poems have appeared in the The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s and The Nation. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released an audiobook of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). His work has been translated into ten languages. A former tenant lawyer in Boston, Espada is now a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda.