Martín Espada reading & book signing- to benefit The LAVA Center

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Join National Book Award-winner Martín Espada for a poetry reading and book signing to benefit The LAVA Center.
Martín Espada is well-known for his award-winning poetry as well as his social activism. On Saturday, May 20, he will share his words and passions in a special intimate performance at The LAVA Center in downtown Greenfield. Local poet Mishie Serrano will also read. All proceeds will benefit The LAVA Center, and in particular the many LAVA Center spoken and written word programs.
Doors will open at 6:30pm and the reading will start at 7pm. Seating is limited, so be sure to purchase tickets in advance.
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Discounted tickets: We are offering a limited number of $5 tickets for Card to Culture participants. If you have a current EBT, WIC, or ConnectorCare card, contact us for details on how to reserve a discounted ticket to this event.
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Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest book of poems is called Floaters, winner of the 2021 National Book Award and a Massachusetts Book Award. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003) and Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. http://www.martinespada.net
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At only 22, Mishie Serrano is an acclaimed Puerto Rican poet, activist, and community organizer. Her unapologetic poetry gained visibility and momentum in October 2017 when she performed her poem titled “The In Between Race.” Determined to transform controversy into transformative healing, Mishie has been vital in implementing restorative justice culture in Western Mass. Her work as an artivist has also led innovative conversations around the school, including the prison pipeline, domestic abuse, language barriers, immigration, the economic crisis in Puerto Rico, and intersectional feminism. Our Community Salutes of Massachusetts recently awarded her the General Colin L. Powell Service Award.
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