Part of the 2018 Latinx Poetry Reading and Workshop Series at Harvard University

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO was born and raised in New York City and her poetry is infused with Dominican bolero and her beloved city’s tough grit. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. With over fourteen years as a performing poet, Acevedo has graced stages nationally and internationally including renowned venues such as The Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, South Africa’s State Theatre, The Bozar in Brussels, the National Library of Kosovo and many others. S. Acevedo is a National Slam Champion, a Cave Canem Fellow, Cantomundo Fellow, and participant of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop. She is the author of the chapbook, Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths (YesYes Books, 2016) and her debut novel, The Poet X (HarperCollins) will be published in March of 2018.

PEGGY ROBLES-ALVARADO is a tenured New York City educator with graduate degrees in elementary and bilingual education. She is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, a CantoMundo, Academy for Teachers and Home School Fellow as well as a two-time International Latino Book Award winner and author of Conversations With My Skin and Homage to the Warrior Women. As a former teen mother and an initiated priestess in the Lukumi and Palo spiritual systems, Peggy uses her incredible rhythmic energy to celebrate womanhood and honor cultural rituals. She is a 2014 BRIO performance poet award winner and in 2016 she was named one of the 25 Most Influential Women of the Bronx, a BCA Arts Fund, and Spaceworks Bronx Community Artist Grant recipient. Peggy has been published in 92Y’s #wordswelivein, NACLA, ¡Manteca! An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies, The Bronx Memoir Project, The Other Side of Violet Anthology and the forthcoming anthology Latina Voices. She has been featured on HBO Habla Women, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Poets & Writers Connecting Cultures Reading, and The BADD!ASS Women Festival.  Through Robleswrites Productions she has produced and edited the following anthologies: The Abuela Stories Project (2016) and Mujeres, The Magic, The Movement and The Muse (2017) as well as directed the performance of Live Big Girl at The National Black Theater. For more information please visit Robleswrites.com and Abuelastories.com.

City of Boston Poet Laureate DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES is a professor in the Creative Arts and Learning Division at Lesley University. A writer and poet, Legros Georges has been widely recognized a variety of recognition for her work with and recent literary awards such as: the 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Poetry; the 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist in Poetry; Lesley University Faculty Development Grants; and a 2013 Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship/Andrew W. Mellon Grant. Legros Georges work has been published in a wide variety of publications including The Boston Globe, World Literature Today, The Caribbean Writer, Callaloo, Poeisis, The American Poetry Review and many authors and is the author of the collection Maroon. Legros Georges was born in Haiti and grew up in Boston’s Haitian community in Mattapan. She received a B.S. in Communication Studies from Emerson College, and holds an M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from New York University.

The Inaugural Latinx Poetry Reading and workshop series in the Spring of 2018 was organized by Melissa Castillo-Garsow to promote a diversity of voices at Harvard, celebrate Latinx voices in poetry, and foster poetic connections with the greater Boston area. This event is sponsored by the Provostial Fund for Arts and Humanities, Observatorio Cervantes, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration and Rights; the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) and the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature.