UM reading and writers’ salon 9/6-7/11

Polyglot Writers: A Reading Series on Writing Across Languages
Sept. 6 and 7

Polyglot Writers: A Reading Series on Writing Across Languages
Sept. 6, 2011, 7 PM
College of Arts & Sciences Gallery and Conference Center, University of Miami
1210 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables, FL 33146

Writer’s Salon
Sept. 7, 2011, 8:30 pm
Books & Books
927 Lincoln Road
Miami Beach
$10 at the door (Free admission to UM students with Cane card)

Contact information: M. Evelina Galang, Director of Creative Writing, 305 284 5573, mgalang@miami.edu ; Daisy Hernández, Graduate Assistant, d.hernandez22@umiami.edu

In a global society where languages float across borders, race and class, we have become a nation of polyglot people. At the University of Miami our student body represents 146 nations and it is common to walk across the campus and hear conversations in more than two or three languages. Not unusual when you consider that the U.S. Census Bureau has determined that the number of people speaking a language other than English at home has doubled in the last three decades. The Creative Writing Department’s reading series, Polyglot Writers: Writing Across Languages explores the fluidity of words as they define and redesign the narratives of writers who come from multiple languages, cultures and traditions.

This year, we have also partnered with Books & Books to host writers’ salons. Join us as we engage in fine desserts, after dinner drinks, and conversations that focus on the play of language in all its forms.

We will kick off the series Tuesday, September 6, and Wednesday, September 7, with UM visiting professors, Cristina García and John Murillo.

García is the author of five novels including Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, and The Lady Matador’s Hotel. Her work has been nominated for a National Book Award and has been translated into fourteen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant.

John Murillo is the author of the poetry collection, Up Jump the Boogie. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the New York Times, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in such publications as Callaloo, Court Green, Ninth Letter, and Ploughshares, and is forthcoming in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African-American Poetry.

Other authors in the “Polyglot Writers” Reading Series include Susana Chávez-Silverman, Nathalie Handal, Ishion Hutchinson, and Bino A. Realuyo.

“Polyglot Writers” Reading Series is sponsored by the University of Miami’s Creative Writing Program, Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences, American Studies Program, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures’ Joseph Carter Memorial Fund, Multicultural Student Affairs, and our partners at Books & Books.

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