“CARIBBEAN NARRATIVES: HISTORY, HEROES & HEALING” – PANEL

Room 8302 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)

DIANNELY ANTIGUA’s Good Monster presents a raw and innovative poetry collection that navigates themes of trauma, chronic pain, and mental illness. MERLE COLLINS’ Ocean Stirrings: A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings offers a poetic exploration of Little’s life, intertwining historical narrative with the power of imagination to illuminate a figure often overshadowed by her famous son. GEOFFREY PHILP’s graphic novel My Name is Marcus introduces readers to Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican icon who ignited a global movement for social justice. Together, these works offer profound insights into the history, heroes, and healing that define the Caribbean experience. Moderated by poet, blogger, and radio host SHARON CORINTHIAN.

THREE POETS LAUREATE IN CONVERSATION

Room 8303 (Building 8, 3rd Floor)

Join us for a poetry reading and conversation on the role of the localized poet laureate in service to the community. DIANNELY ANTIGUA (Portsmouth, New Hampshire) grapples with the body as a site of pain and trauma in Good Monster, chronicling her reckoning with shame, her fallout with faith, and the desire to feel pleasure in an inhospitable body. Love Prodigal by TRACI BRIMHALL (Kansas) lives in the dishevelment of starting over from a divorce and a new diagnosis, cycles of loss, heartbreak, family, and chronic illness, reaching for the slow, messy, and imperfect process of healing. CARIDAD MORO-GRONLIER (Miami-Dade County) plunges readers into Cuban American life on-the-hyphen in Tortillera, considering the role of language on gender, sexuality, diaspora, and shame. Moderated by NICOLE TALLMAN, poetry ambassador for Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

FIESTA DE POETAS: A CELEBRATION OF LATINO POETRY

Room 2106 (Building 2, 1st Floor)

Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology edited by poet and critic RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ gathers more than 180 poets in Spanish and English spanning from the 17th century to the present. These poems bear witness to the beauty and power of this vibrant and expanding tradition: its profound engagement with pasts both mythical and historical, its reckoning with the complexities of language, land, and identity, and its vision of a nation enriched by the stories of immigrants, exiles, refugees, and their descendants.

Join us for an evening of poetry celebrating the richest, most revelatory collection of 21st-century Latino poetry ever published, followed by a dance party. Featuring DIANNELY ANTIGUA, RICHARD BLANCO, SANDRA M. CASTILLO, ADRIAN CASTRO, ARIEL FRANCISCO, RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ, FARID MATUK, PABLO MEDINA, DEBORAH PAREDEZ, GABRIEL RAMIREZ, and ALEXANDRA LYTTON REGALADO. Introduction by CARIDAD MORO-GRONLIER, poet laureate for Miami-Dade County; moderated by MAX RUDIN, president and publisher of Library of America.