Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Voices at the Center of American Literature will feature readings and conversations by and with BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors to discuss visibility, community, and navigating multiple identities, plus the “own voice” and personal narrative. Award-winning poets Brenda Cárdenas and Phuong T. Vuong will speak on these topics in a conversation moderated by Letras Latinas editor Francisco Aragón.

Please join us for what will undoubtedly be an incredible evening of poetry and discussion.

ASL interpreting services will be provided. This event will take place in-person at the Hen House Literary Center in Pasadena, California, and will also be livestreamed on Red Hen Press’s website at redhen.org/virtual, Red Hen’s YouTube Channel, and Red Hen’s Facebook Page.

This event is free, but all events taking place at the Hen House Literary Center require proof of vaccination prior to entry. Please have your vaccination cards and IDs at the ready!

Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. He is the author of Puerta del Sol and Glow of Our Sweat, as well as editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry. His poems have appeared in twenty anthologies, most recently The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tia Chucha Press) and Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightbook Books). Others include Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies (W.W. Norton), Deep Travel: American Poets Abroad (Ninebark Press), and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press). In 2017, he was a finalist for Split This Rock’s Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism. A native of San Francisco, CA, he directs Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies. Aragón divides his time between Washington, D.C. and South Bend, IN.

Brenda Cárdenas is the author of Boomerang (Bilingual Press) and the chapbooks Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors with her husband Roberto Harrison; Achiote Seeds/Semillas de Achiote with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, and Gabriela Erandi Rico; and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone. She also coedited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press). Cárdenas has served as faculty for the CantoMundo writers’ retreat and as Milwaukee Poet Laureate. She currently teaches Creative Writing and Latinx Literature at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Phuong T. Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet and essayist who cannot stop thinking about language, memory, and migration. She is the author of The House I Inherit (Finishing Line, 2019). Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Asian American Writers’ Workshop: The Margins, and elsewhere. Hailing from Oakland, by way of Hue, Viet Nam, Phuong is currently a PhD student in literature and a James K. Binder Fellow at the University of California, San Diego, situated on unceded Kumeyaay land.