Heartened to be included in the new Sojourners Anthology, titled, Light for the Way: Seeking Simplicity, Connection, and Repair in a Broken World, coming out January 13th. The collection feels especially timely right now in sustaining our resistance and repairing our world. sojo.net/light
Support them if you can. We need to preserve these legacy institutions listening at the grassroots for all our songs.
…and by doing so made me believe I had something to say, that someone was listening.
They’ve been doing this for the past 50 years, a struggle at times to stay afloat, operating on shoestring budgets, a labor of love and of fierce and talented muse editors and volunteers.
Back when Calyx was founded (1976), publication wasn’t a given for women of color or with divergent perspectives. Glass ceilings still existed in the literary pantheons. Calyx was one of the first magazines to publish my poetry (1982)…
I was honored to to judge the @calyxpress.bsky.social 2025 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing, named in honor of one of Calyx’s founders, a magazine that celebrates diversity and excellence in women’s literature and arts. Read the winners work here: www.calyxpress.org/margarita-do...
My sincerest congratulations to Ian Baucom, 18th President of Middlebury College. It was a pleasure to speak at his inauguration, and celebrate the College that nurtured my soul as a student and teacher.
THE BIG M: 13 Writers Take Back the Story of Menopause.
We are here to lock arms and say embodied storytelling matters. We are not the story they made of us.
These are new stories, told on our terms, a long overdue reckoning.
Preorder here: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lidia...
Latino Public Broadcasting will be screening “Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined,” an American Masters film, tomorrow on PBS at 10 pm ET. I’m forever honored by this documentary and invite you to watch.
I didn’t want to go home, this place is magical. If I go to heaven—the jury is still out on this one—one of its neighborhoods will be Salem!
A visit also to an exhibit of Diablos Ecológicos, based on those traditional “devils,” (Diablos Cojuelos) come out on the streets of the D.R. during carnival. Luis Riveras makes his with the community using recycled materials.
Adding to the fun was a visit to Casa de Abuela installation, where we met the curators as well as the director of Punto Urban Art Museum, responsible for all the murals around the neighborhood on subsidized housing.
My conversation on stage with Dr. Keja Valens was like a meeting of old friends to share our stories, told and untold. I also highly recommend picking up a copy of her book, “Culinary Colonialism, Caribbean Cookbooks, and Recipes of National Independence.”
The Salem rep, Manny Cruz, showed up to give me an official welcome—he shares the same name and surname as one of the protagonists in my novel!
Great visit in Salem as guest of the Salem Literary Festival, whose pick for One Book, One Salem this year was The Cemetery of Untold Stories. The warmth and cariño of the community, filled with Dominicans—¡Qué viva Quisqueya!—made up for the rain and chill and the cold wet feet.
An added blessing, which I ascribe to Judy’s poems, the skies finally opened and sent down rain to ease our drought on our way home from the reading.
I’ve been reading and admiring her poems for years and so glad The Central Eye is now available to order at your local bookstore or at www.onionriverpress.com/books/p/the-... so I can share my affection for her work with others.
A lovely reading at Phoenix Books in Burlington, VT. We were a convivial group of fans of my old friend Judy Yarnall, who just published her debut collection of poems at 84.
The Center for Fiction is holding a reading group, “Reading Hispaniola: Edwidge Danticat and Julia Alvarez with Dr. Norrell Edwards”. I’m honored to be included in the curriculum along with one of my favorite writers.
The link to register is available here: centerforfiction.org/group-worksh...
The occasion was a reading and conversation about my novel The Cemetery of Untold Stories. True to the themes of the novel, we created community by listening and talking about stories.
“We are all in this story together,” as one of the characters notes.
A lovely and lively afternoon at Strafford VT’s iconic Town House with the Justin Morrill Homestead Speakers Series: What Really Matters.
What really matters are gatherings like this in which over a hundred community members and friends came together.
We also visited the Dominican Consulate in Boston with our friend Leonidas Valenzuela where we were warmly welcomed by Yadires Nova-Salcedo, Dominican Cultural Liaison in New England, and Bethania Rodríguez, Vice Consul.
A delightful evening at the 36th Annual American Literature Association Conference. Jim Nagel, Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, was a gracious host to a wonderful, engaged audience of scholars, graduate students, and teachers from as far away as South Korea and Ukraine.
Although I’m unable to go due to prior commitments, Dedé’s memoir is essential reading. Attached are a couple of pictures during her and Minou’s visits to Vermont many years ago, in my garden. I hope you will attend.
@wordupbooks.bsky.social will be hosting Ana Martínez and Heather Hennes as they introduce their English translation of Alive in Their Garden: The True Story of the Mirabal Sisters and Their Fight for Freedom with Minou Tavárez Mirabal on May 22nd. You can RSVP here: withfriends.co/event/232900...
The Cemetery of Untold Stories was just released in Italian, translated by Marta Barone and published by Giunti Editore/Romanzo Bompiani. I'm a big fan of the tag line on the back: "There are stories even in silence."
www.bompiani.it/catalogo/il-...
And she is indeed Julia Alvarez. She said when she would visit her mom who lived in Washington Heights and give her name, Dominicans would tell her how proud they were of her work!
And something that has NEVER happened before and will NEVER happen again, one of the women in the audience asked me to sign her book to “Julia Alvarez.” I said, of course, I’ll sign my name, but what’s yours?
Rachel, the events coordinator, and owner, Nicole, were welcoming and generous, and my on-stage conversation with Megan Mayhew Bergman was lively and fun. Megan is an amazing talent— I loved her latest collection of stories, How Strange A Season, as well as her previous, Almost Famous Women.
Rainy and chilly Sunday in Vermont but a warm and lovely group of folks at @northshirebooks.bsky.social's annual Booktopia festival—don’t we all need a utopia right about now and what could be better than one stocked with books?—
I was named poet laureate of Weybridge with Jay Parini several years ago. I decided that— like the national P.L.s— I should DO something, not just sit on laurels and let poetry languish. Thus the Weybridge Haiku Poetry Contest was born. www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture... @sevendaysvt.bsky.social