Join us for a reading celebrating the talent of high school students in Evanston’s Y.O.U. (Youth Organizations Umbrella, Inc.) program, April 17th at 4:30pm in Harris 108. The Voice Within Us program consists of a series of poetry workshops with Evanston high school students. The workshops are led by talented Northwestern students and overseen by faculty associated with Northwestern’s Poetry and Poetics Colloquium. A public reading at Northwestern University during National Poetry Month showcases the creative talent of the the Y.O.U. Students. Their work is celebrated with the release of a limited edition chapbook, published by Damask Press.
Laurie Ann Guerrero was born and raised in the South Side of San Antonio, she received the Academy of American Poets Prize, among others, at Smith College. Winner of the 2012 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, her first full-length collection, A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying, selected by Francisco X. Alarcón, was released by University of Notre Dame Press in 2013. Guerrero’s poetry and critical work have appeared in Huizache, Texas Monthly, Bellevue Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Global City Review, Texas Observer, Chicana/Latina Studies, Feminist Studies, and others. Guerrero holds a B.A. in English Language & Literature from Smith College and an MFA in poetry from Drew University. Guerrero’s chapbook, Babies under the Skin (2008), won the Panhandler Publishing Award, chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye. A CantoMundo fellow and member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, Guerrero’s work has been highlighted in the LA Review of Books, The Poetry Foundation/Harriet Blog, and Poets & Writers Magazine in which she was named one of ten top-emerging poets in 2013. Other honors include fellowships from the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award Foundation and the Artist Foundation of San Antonio. Guerrero has served on the faculty at Palo Alto College, University of the Incarnate Word, University of Texas-El Paso, and Gemini Ink, a community-centered literary arts organization in San Antonio. She where she is a visiting writer at Our Lady of the Lake University.Rich Villar is a writer originally from Paterson, New Jersey. He directs Acentos, an organization fostering audiences and community around Latino/a literature. He has been quoted on Latino literature and culture by both The New York Times and the Daily News, and his poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Renaissance Noire, Hanging Loose, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Sou’wester. His first collection, COMPREHENDING FOREVER, is forthcoming in 2014 from Willow Books.