Deborah Paredez reads from her new book, Year of the Dog. In the tradition of women as the unsung keepers of history, Paredez tells her story, in both poems and documentary photocollage, as a Latina daughter of the Vietnam War. After a 15-minute reading, Paredez will discuss her work and her creative process.

Deborah Paredez is a poet and interdisciplinary performance scholar whose lectures and publications examine Black and Latinx popular culture, poetry of war and witness, feminist elegy, cultural memory, and the role of divas in American culture. She is the author of the award-winning critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke 2009) and of the poetry collections, This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002) and Year of the Dog (BOA 2020). Her poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, National Public Radio, Boston Review, Poetry, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere. Her research and writing have been supported by the Hedgebrook Center for Women Writers, the American Association of University Women, and the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation. She received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Performance at Northwestern University and her BA in English at Trinity University. Born and raised in San Antonio, she has lived on both coasts, endured a handful of Chicago winters, and taught American poetry in Paris, while remaining rooted in her Tejana love of Selena and the Spurs. She currently lives with her husband, historian Frank Guridy, and their daughter in New York City, where she is a professor of creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University and the Co-Founder of CantoMundo, a national organization for Latinx poets.

CART will be provided.