Poetry Reading & Book Signing | August 8, 2015
The Round Rock Public Library will present a Poetry Reading and Book-Signing Event from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 8.
Schedule:
1:30-2:15—Featured readings
2:15-2:30—Q&A panel moderated by Marian Haddad
2:30-3:00—Community Open Mic
3:00-3:30—Book Signing / Meet-and-Greet with Poets (A portion of book sales will be donated back to the Friends of the Round Rock Public Library.)
Featured readers include:
Liliana Valenzuela is an award-winning poet, literary translator, essayist, and journalist. She is the author of the poetry collection Codex of Journeys: Bendito camino (Mouthfeel Press, 2012). Her translation of ¿Has visto a María? (Have you Seen Marie?) by Sandra Cisneros was published by Knopf in 2012, and she is currently translating Cisneros’ upcoming essay collection A House of My Own. Valenzuela is the Spanish language translator of works by Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, Nina Marie Martínez, Ana Castillo, Dagoberto Gilb, Richard Rodríguez, Rudolfo Anaya, Cristina García, Gloria Anzaldúa, and many other writers. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and an inaugural fellow of CantoMundo, she works as a reporter for¡ahora sí!, the Spanish publication of the Austin American-Statesman.
Recipient of awards in translation, journalism, fiction, and poetry, including the Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry in Translation; the Chicano/Latino Award, first prize in fiction; the Christina Sergeyevna Award, first prize in poetry; Texas Associated Press first prize in features and first prize in news, among others.
“Liliana is also a dynamic performer, recently engaged to record the audiobook edition of La casa en Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros for Random House Audio.” [via Corazón Bilingüe, KMBH FM 88.9/88.1, an NPR affiliate, Rio Grande Valley]
Sandra Cisneros, “Poetry is her instrument, and the songs Valenzuela plucks are from her voyage beyond borders, a vantage point called Nepantla, eternally a visitor from the land in-between, even at home. Lyrical, lush, traviesa, here is a woman’s voice uncensored.”[via ameliamontes.com]
Richard Blanco, Inaugural Poet, “writes of Codex of Journeys: Bendito Camino: “Word by word, line by line, Codex of Journeys entrances with its crisp rhythms echoing in the heart and transfixes with its luminous images, vibrating on the page. Spare and full of light, each poem is like a tiny x-ray of the soul, capturing so much of what is not seen by the naked eye underneath.” [via ameliamontes.com]
Lyman Grant has worked at Austin Community College for the past 35 years. Currently he serves as Dean of Arts and Humanities. He is the editor of several books including The Letters of Roy Bedichek and New Growth: Contemporary Short Fiction by Texas Writers. His poems have been published in several journals and anthologies, including Is This Forever, Or What?; Feeding the Crow; Big Land, Big Sky, Big Hair. and Best Texas Writing I. His books of poetry are Text and Commentary, The Road Home, As Long As We Need, and Established Parameters (a chapbook).
“He has also edited two books relating to Texas literature. His articles and essays have appeared in the Texas Observer,Texas Humanist, Texas Books and Review, Dallas Morning News, and Langdon Review, among others. Lyman recently returned to Austin after spending a year on the road visiting 47 states with his family in a 34-foot RV.” [via malvernbooks.com]
Lyman Grant, “I’m trying to get in touch with truth with a big T. In the end, they are all songs to God.” via an interview by James Martin, referring to “the poem is a prayer.”
“Crafting his poems with a confidence made possible by both adventure and maturity, Lyman Grant sings his readers home and into a world where points of raggedness can turn elegant”—Former Texas Poet Laureate James Hoggard
“The big ideas are here, but so are modest pleasures, the joy of being humble and diminishing the scale in which he lives,”—Paul Christensen
“Vivid and honest, realistic and romantic, in these poems of discovery, Grant becomes spiritualist, mindful of the present.”—Anne McCrady
Marian Haddad, MFA is a Pushcart-nominated poet, writer, manuscript & publishing consultant, private writing mentor, lecturer and creative workshop instructor. Her collection of poems, Wildflower. Stone., (Pecan Grove Press 2011), is the first hardback in the nearly-25-years the press was in existence.
Haddad’s recent collection has been endorsed by Pulitzer Prize poet, Yusef Komunyakaa, who states that this collection, “…celebrates the observable mysteries of daily existence … these poems have dropped all disguises, and each rides the pure joy of music. There are superb leaps and silences that deftly highlight the monumental in simple things.” This collection has also been endorsed by award-winning-author, Denise Chavez, and by Glover Davis, Professor Emeritus, San Diego State University, who studied under U.S Poet Laureate, Phil Levine. In Former First Lady Laura Bush’s Spoken from the Heart, she references Marian Haddad’s description of the light in El Paso.
Her work has been covered by The Huffington Post, and The Hallmark Channel featured an extended feature on Haddad’s literary work. Haddad’s chapbook, Saturn Falling Down, was published at the request of Texas Public Radio in correlation with their Hands-on Poetry workshops (2003). Her full-length collection, Somewhere between Mexico and a River Called Home (Pecan Grove Press, 2004) approached its fifth printing before the passing of editor/publisher H. Palmer Hall.
