Poetry With The Latin House Party Poetry Festival
Part of the Latin Fusion: Jersey Style Arts Series
WHEN: April 28, 6 PM
WHERE: Barron Arts Center, 582 Rahway Ave., Woodbridge
ADMISSION: free, with a suggested donation of $5.00. Reservations are suggested.
Please call 732.634.0413 for more information.
PoetsWednesday Director Deborah LaVeglia lines up Latin poetry All-Stars for an evening of readings featuring Nancy Mercado, Sheila Maldonado, Emanuel Xavier & Torres complete with musical accompaniment.
- DEBORAH LaVEGLIA has been published in many poetry journals including Negative Capability, Lips, Paterson Literary Review, American Poetry Journal, Exit 13, Tiferet,and Edison Literary Review. An adjunct English Professor at Middlesex County College, Ms. La Veglia’s first chapbook, The Vigil, was published in 2000. Since 1991, Ms. LaVeglia has been director of the PoetsWednesday Poetry Series which runs out of the Barron Arts Center. LaVeglia is also the creator of “PoetsWednesday & More," a website which includes information about her own series, and is a resource for poets which includes information on various reading serious, contests, poetry journals, poetry prompts, poems and other information.
- NANCY MERCADO holds a doctoral degree from Binghampton University, SUYT. She is the author of It Concerns The Madness (Long Shot Productions). Most recently she has served as the editor of if the world were mine, a children’s anthology published
by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. - TORRES (EDWIN TORRES), a bilingual poet rooted in the languages of sight and sound, has been creating text and performance work since 1988. His performances mingle the textures of poetry with vocal & physical improvisation, sound-elements and visual theater. His introduction to poetry was through the visual work of the Dadaists & Futurists, discovering their malleable text-works aligned with his career in graphic arts. His first reading was at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe in 1990, and his work has been published in many anthologies and journals since then.
- EMANUEL XAVIER is author of the poetry collections If Jesus Were Gay & other poems, Americano, Pier Queen, the novel Christ Like, and editor of Me No Habla With Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry, Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry, and Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry. Recipient of the Marsha A. Gomez Cultural Heritage Award, a New York City Council Citation, and a World Pride Award, he has been featured on Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry on HBO. He has performed throughout the United States and abroad in the cities of Buenos Aires, Belgium, London, and Paris.
- SHEILA MALDONADO grew up in Coney Island, New York, across the street from the Atlantic Ocean. Her family hails from Honduras. She teaches creative writing for The City University of New York and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She holds degrees in
English from Brown University and poetry from The City College of New York. Her poems have appeared in Rattapallax, Callaloo and Me No Habla with Acento: Contemporary Latino Poetry. ONE-BEDROOM SOLO (Fly By Night Press, 2011) is her first book of poems.
About the Latin Fusion: Jersey Style series
This event is part of the Latin Fusion: Jersey Style series, an all encompassing arts series that celebrates Latin influences in New Jersey and how New Jersey in turn has influenced Latin culture. The series is sponsored by The Woodbridge Township Cultural Arts Commission with the support of Mayor John E. McCormac. Funding has been made possible in part by The Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission through a grant provided by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts / Department of State; a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Barron Arts Center is located at 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge, NJ.
Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday 11 AM-4 PM; Saturday and Sunday 2 –4 PM.