Sholeh Wolpé and Adela Najarro


 
Tuesday, May 12, 2015 at 7:30 PM,

 Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz

Sholeh Wolpé is a poet, playwright and literary translator whose work, according to Terrain Journal, “transcends the boundaries of language, gender, ethnicity and nationality.” Born in Iran, she spent most of her teen years in Trinidad and the UK before settling in the United States. Wolpé has authored three collections of poetry, most recently Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths. She is the editor of two anthologies, Breaking the Jaws of Silence, which gathers American voices of protest, and The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and Its Exiles. Her books of translations include, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad and a Persian translation of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself (co-translated with Mohsen Emadi), commissioned by the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in celebration of Whitman’s work. Her latest book, Attar’s Conference of the Birds, will be released by W. W. Norton in 2017. Wolpé’s accolades include the 2014 Pen/Heim award, 2013 Midwest Book Award, 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize and residency awards at Hedgebrook in Whidbey Island, and Château de Lavigny in Switzerland.

Adela Najarro is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Split Geography (Mouthfeel Press) and Twice Told Over (Unsolicited Press), both published in March 2015. David A. Sullivan notes that in Split Geography “the personality that emerges from this collection is funny, poignant, irascible, and above all, in love with the promise that writing can be a spiritual exercise to remake ourselves. These are poems to live among. “About Twice Told Over, ”Juan Felipe Herrera states, “A tour de force, magnificent, lovely, sculpted, drenched with Borges, Sexton, Najarro. A radically new Latina verse.” She currently lives in Santa Cruz and teaches creative writing, literature and composition at Cabrillo College. 

Cosponsored by Poetry Santa Cruz and A New Cadence Poetry Series