Ibis Literary Reading Series 2013-14

Master Class with Jaswinder Bolina, Neil de la Flor, and Oliver de la Paz
12:30-3PM
1252 Memorial Drive
Ashe Building, Room 427
Coral Gables

Reading featuring Jaswinder Bolina, Neil de la Flor, and Oliver de la Paz
7-8:30PM  
1210 Stanford Drive
Wesley Foundation Building
CAS Gallery
Coral Gables

Jaswinder Bolina

Jaswinder Bolina is author of the books Phantom Camera, winner of the 2012 Green Rose Prize in Poetry from New Issues Press, and Carrier Wave, winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry from the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University. His work has appeared in numerous U.S. and international literary journals and in The Best American Poetry series. His most recent poems are included in current or forthcoming issues of The Baffler, Pleiades, Southeast Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. His essays have appeared at The Poetry Foundation dot org, The Huffington Post, The State, and other magazines. They have also appeared in or are forthcoming from anthologies including Poets on Teaching (University of Iowa Press 2011), Language: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press 2013), and The Task of Un/Masking (University of Georgia Press 2014). He is currently working on a third collection of poems and on a collection of essays. 

Neil de la Flor

Neil de la Flor is a writer, teacher, photographer, former fashion designer and a magician. His publications include An Elephant's Memory of Blizzards (Marsh Hawk Press, 2013); Sinead O'Connor and her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (Firewheel Editions, 2011),co-authored with Maureen Seaton andwinner of the Sentence Book Award; Almost Dorothy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2010), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize; Two Thieves and a Liar (Jackleg Press, 2013) and the chapbook Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press, 2006), both co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass.

He is the co-recipient of a Knight Arts Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for Reading Queer, an organization founded to establish Miami as a center for queer literature. As Executive Director of Reading Queer, de la Flor seeks to “transform the lives of queer writers through the act and the art of creative writing.” “Reading Queer,” de la Flor says, “will give queer voices another platform for self-exploration and self-expression, and give them the space to demonstrate how creative writing can be used as a medium to improve, empower and enrich the creative lives of queer writers and the community.”

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), andRequiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada.  He is the co-editor with Stacey Lynn Brown of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (U. of Akron Press 2012).  He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry and serves on the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Board.  A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals likeVirginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry:  The Next Generation.  He teaches at Western Washington University.

Master Class with Edwidge Danticat, Patricia Engel, and R. Zamora Linmark
3:30-5:00 PM
1252 Memorial Drive
427 Ashe Administration Building
Coral Gables 

Reading featuring Edwidge Danticat, Patricia Engel, and R. Zamora Linmark
7-8:30 PM     
1210 Stanford Drive
Wesley Foundation Building
CAS Gallery
Coral Gables

Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat  is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner, and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures, Haiti Noir, Haiti Noir 2,  and Best American Essays 2011. She has written four  books for  young adults and children--Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou--as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel and a collection of essays, Create Dangerously. Her memoir , Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a  2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Her most recent book is Claire of the Sea Light.

Patricia Engel

Patricia Engel is the author of Vida and It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, forthcoming from Grove Press in August 2013. Vida, her acclaimed debut, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award, New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and Paterson Fiction Award, winner of the International Latino Book Award, Florida Book Award, and Independent Publisher Book Award, and longlisted for The Story Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Additionally, Vida was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Barnes & Noble, Latina Magazine, and Los Angeles Weekly. Patricia’s fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Boston Review, Guernica, and Harvard Review among other publications, and have received awards including the Boston Review Fiction Prize, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Key West Literary Seminar, Norman Mailer Writer’s Colony, Hedgebrook, Ucross, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Born to Colombian parents and raised in New Jersey, Patricia earned her undergraduate degree in French and Art History at New York University and her MFA in Fiction at Florida International University.

R. Zamora Linmark

R. Zamora Linmark is the author of three collections of poetry, Prime Time Apparitions, The Evolution of a Sigh, and Drive-By

Vigils, all from Hanging Loose Press.  He's also written two novels, Leche, from Coffee House Press, and Rolling The R's, which he'd adapted for the stage and premiered in Honolulu in 2008.  A recipient of several grants and fellowships, including two from the Fulbright Foundation, he lives and writes in Manila, where he was born.  He is currently working on a Kafka-inspired play, But, Beautiful, and a novel, These Books Belong to Ken Z.

Ibis Literary Reading & Performance Series Special Event with Dr. Matthew Asprey Gear and Professor Lester Goran
3-4:30 PM
1210 Stanford Drive
Wesley Foundation Building
CAS Gallery
Coral Gables

Matthew Asprey Gear is an Australian writer and academic. He is one of the founding editors of Contrappasso Magazine. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Senses of Cinema, PopMatters, Island, Extempore, Crime Factory, and Over My Dead Body! In 2011 he graduated with a PhD in Media Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has lectured in cinema and creative writing and is presently an Honorary Academic at Macquarie writing a study of Orson Welles. His website is www.matthewasprey.com.

Lester Goran grew up in Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue (1960), Maria Light (1962), The Candy Butcher's Farewell (1964), The Stranger in the Snow (1966), The Demon in the Sun Parlor (1968), The Keeper of Secrets (1972), This New Land (1980), Covenant with Tomorrow (1982), Mrs. Beautiful (1985), The Bright Streets of Surfside: The Record of a Friendship with Isaac Bashevis Singer (1994), Tales From The Irish Club (a 1995 New York Times Notable Book), She Loved Me Once and Other Stories (1997), Bing Crosby's Last Song (1998), and Outlaws of the Purple Cow and Other Stories (2000). In 1965, Goran helped to establish the first creative writing curriculum at UM. He served as a faculty representative and then later as Chairman on the UM Publishing Board and oversaw all publications from literary magazines to the Hurricane, UM's student paper. In 1991, he was instrumental in organizing and establishing the Creative Writing MFA Program. Throughout his teaching career, Goran has taught more than 20,000 students, and the fall of 2010 marked his fiftieth year teaching at the University of Miami.