This evening is not possible without some sponsorship.
And we're grateful to have Kyle Dacuyan here with us
from PEN America, which is one of the sponsors this evening.
He's come out from New York to be a part of this,
and be spending some time in Tucson talking
to lots of different people.
And we're grateful that this is one of the stops on his visit.
And so please help me welcome Kyle Dacuyan to say
a little bit about PEN America.
[APPLAUSE]
It's an honor to be here in a community with all of you.
Thank you to the Poetry Center for bringing us together,
to Hannah Ensor and Tyler Meier for the vision
of your programming.
And thank you especially to Odilia Galván Rodríguez,
Martín Espada, and Mari Herreras for the large-hearted courage
of your work.
I'm here from PEN America, a literary organization
with over 5,000 members across the country,
including writers, editors, journalists, agents,
publishers, and others committed to the defense
of free expression.
The first PEN club was founded in 1921
in the spirit of fostering international literary
fellowship among writers that would transcend
ethnic and national divides.
The poems of the writers who will be reading and speaking
in conversation this evening provide
a model for the kind of transcendent spirit
PEN's charter envisioned--
transcendent in the ways they exceed imagination,
transcendent in the ways they reach
across notions of distance and difference
to insist upon new conditions for being together
in the world, and transcendent in.
The ways the work leaps forward from the page and into action,
out into community.
I'm visiting Tucson from PEN America
because we've made a funding resource available to support
the many community engagement projects being undertaken
by writers around the country.
These include symbolic demonstrations,
facilitated civic dialogues, workshops and trainings
that empower vulnerable groups, and other ideas and frameworks
that are still being dreamt.
In particular, we hope this resource
will help reframe the ways in which stories
and experiences become circulated
as news and information.
We hope that this engagement will
help to repair the many divisions which
arise when false narratives are submitted
into the public square as fact.
It seems to me that the literary and advocacy communities
in Tucson are acting with a kind of synchronicity that
might provide a useful template for the ambition
of this resource.
It would be an honor for us to help grow and amplify
these efforts.
And it is an honor for me this evening
to learn and hear from three individuals who
have so clearly lit the path through their words.
Thank you.