BETHEL — Author Martín Espada will give a reading on Thursday, October 10, as part of the Richard Blanco Series at Gould Academy. The event is open to all. Reading at 7 pm – Bingham Auditorium. Book signing and reception at 8 p.m. – Marlon Family IDEAS Center. Please note: this event was originally scheduled for Tuesday, September 24, and has been rescheduled.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957, Espada has published almost 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His latest collection of poems from Norton is called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). Other books of poems include The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (2000), Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (1993) and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (1990).

His many honors include the 2018 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, an American Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson 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. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latino community, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

The Richard Blanco Visiting Writers Program and Retreat—a collaboration between Richard Blanco and Gould Academy—celebrates living writers and builds appreciation for contemporary work.

While on campus, visiting writers work with Gould students and faculty through classroom visits and workshops, giving them the opportunity to connect with and learn from a living artist. Writers are provided an honorarium and a two-week stay in Blanco’s private Bethel, Maine, guest house.

“Part of what I learned over the process of being the inaugural poet was that we as a country need to continue to create new generations of readers and appreciators of poetry,” Blanco says. “Through contact with contemporary work and contemporary authors, my hope is that students at Gould can develop that appreciation and understand that poetry, just like any art, is still vibrant and alive today — one that can teach us about ourselves and about the world.”

For more information on the Richard Blanco Visiting Writers Program and Retreat, visit gouldacademy.org/academics/visiting-writers-program/or contact Julie Reiff at reiffj@gouldacademy.org or 207-824-7781.

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