Patricia Spears Jones is the author of two poetry collections: Femme du Monde (Tia Chucha Press) and The Weather That Kills (Coffee House Press) and two chapbooks, Repuestas! and Mythologizing Always.
She is co-editor of the photo: Elaine Sexton’s ground-breaking, multi-cultural anthology, Ordinary Women: Poems by New York City Women with Fay Chiang, Sandra Maria Esteves and Sara Miles. Her poems are anthologized in Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, Bum Rush-the Page, a defpoetry jam, Best American Poetry 2000, and elsewhere in print and on the web. In 1994, her play Mother was commissioned and produced by Mabou Mines, the internationally-acclaimed theater collective, and a second collaboration with Mabou, Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting, with composer Lisa Gutkin and four other poets, was performed in New York last year. Spears Jones has received fellowships to Bread Loaf, the Millay Colony, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. She is a recipient of awards from the National Endowment for Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Goethe Institute. She has taught at Pine Manor College; the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church; Parsons School of Design; New School University; Sarah Lawrence College; Naropa University and for Cave Canem. Born and raised in Arkansas, Spears Jones has lived in New York City since the mid-1970s.
Elaine Sexton is the author of two collections of poems: Causeway (2008), and Sleuth (2003), both from New Issues Press (Western Michigan University). Her poems, art reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, Art in America, ARTnews, Poetry, Massachusetts Review, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and many blogs and online sites. She teaches a poetry workshop at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, most recently a seminar with a special focus on the chapbook. She lives in New York City, where she works in magazine publishing.
Wednesday, August 13, 7:30 pm, Poets Renato Rosaldo and Javier Huerta
One of the leading cultural anthropologists in the world today, Renato Rosaldo started writing poetry in English and Spanish while recovering from a stroke in 1996. His first book of poetry, Prayer to Spider Woman / Rezo a la Mujer Araña, received an American Book Award (2004). Individual poems have won the El Andar poetry contest (2000) and the Many Mountains Moving poetry contest (2005). He is currently a Professor of Anthropology at New York University and was previously a Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences at Stanford University. Javier O. Huerta’s poems have been included in numerous anthologies, including Red, White, and Blues (University of Iowa Press, 2004), and journals such as Punto de Partida (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). His debut collection Some Clarifications y otras poemas (Arte Publico, 2007) received the 31st Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from UC Irvine.
Finally, be sure to join the Writers’ Center as we celebrate 20 years of literary excellence in your community. At the annual gala, Friday, September 19 at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, we will honor Benjamin Cheever, Brenda Connor-Bey and Donald Stever. You do not want to miss this event which concludes with a very special reading featuring Billy Collins!
For more information call 914.332.5953 or visit www.writerscenter.org
