Article originally published by Gonzaga University News Service.
SPOKANE, Wash. – Following a powerful reading and question-and-answer session with acclaimed novelist Tim O’Brien on Feb. 6, the popular Gonzaga University Writers Series continues with a free, public reading from distinguished poet Lorna Dee Cervantes at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 28 in the Cataldo Hall Globe Room.
Cervantes was born in San Jose, California, into a working-class family of Mexican and Chumasch Indian heritage. Much of her early childhood was spent with her mother, who spoke English exclusively, and her bilingual grandmother. In 1970, she established Mango Publications to support Chicana writers. The press was instrumental in increasing interest in Chicana poetry and prose.
Cervantes went to Mexico in 1974, where she had a breakthrough reading of her poem “Refugee Ship.” One of her first critical successes, the poem called attention to the U.S. Chicana political condition. More attention came with the publication of “Emplumada,” which won the American Book Award in 1982. Cervantes’ “From the Cables of Genocide: Poems of Love and Hunger” (1991) is described as a dark revelation of the ways that people respond to personal and national trauma; partly a response to the murder of Cervantes’ mother, and partly a response to the global and political violence of the 1980s, the volume connects themes of transnational violence to individual bodies.
Cervantes continues as an activist, teaching, lecturing, and writing. Her 2006 collection “Drive: The First Quartet” (the first of four volumes planned) is a wide-ranging set of poems and artwork that creates an overwhelming sensory experience. Her most recent work, “Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems” (2011), has received praise for its approach to writing love poems for others. Cervantes’ poems are included in a vast number of anthologies, underscoring the scope, appeal, and accessibility of her work. While she directed the creative writing program at University of Colorado-Boulder for many years, she most recently was a Regents’ Lecturer at University of California-Berkeley.
Tod Marshall, English professor, award-winning poet, the Washington State Poet Laureate and the Robert K. and Ann Powers Chair of the Humanities at Gonzaga, organizes the series that he started in 2007. It features authors reading from their own works, stimulates interest in literature and reading through dynamic encounters with some of our nation’s most accomplished writers whose voices express new and different perspectives.
This year’s program is made possible in partnership with Gonzaga’s English department, Gonzaga’s Unity and Multicultural Education Center, Spokane Falls Community College, the Davenport Hotel, Gonzaga’s Center for Public Humanities, and the Gonzaga University Student Body Association.
The 2016-17 edition of the series concludes on Tuesday, April 11 with a reading by Brian Bedard along with winners of the annual Michael Gurian Writing Awards contest for Gonzaga students; the event begins at 7:30 p.m., in the Jepson Center’s Wolff Auditorium.
For more information, please contact Tod Marshall at marshall@gonzaga.edu or (509) 313-6681.