Good evening.
My name is Michael Spurgeon, and I am a Executive Vice President
of the Albert & Elaine Borchard Foundation,
as well as the Director of the Borchard Foundation
Center on Literary Arts.
I'm also a graduate of the University of Arizona MFA
program, and a former employee of the University of Arizona
Poetry Center.
So this budding collaboration between our two organizations
now in its second year is particularly close to my heart.
Tonight is made even more special
because I consider Rita Dove and her husband, Fred,
to be personal friends.
The mission of the Borchard Center on literary arts
is to create a community of artists
from across the Americas, to foster
meaningful connections between people, cultures,
and the natural world.
To achieve this mission, the Center
awards El Grand Balam, a three-year $150,000 prize
going to a mid-career writer.
The award is currently held by Yucatec poet Briceida Cuevas
Cob.
We also provide multiple $30,000 fellowships to writers
from Canada, Mexico, and the United States
in various stages of their careers as a means
to acknowledge the extraordinary work they have already
done to support future work and to facilitate
their attendance at our annual retreat and encuentro
held each January in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.
We are profoundly pleased to include Rita Dove
in this fellowship of writers.
To further pursue our mission, we partner with like minded
organizations such as 916 Ink, a Sacramento nonprofit that
empowers youth by turning them into published writers,
Sna Jtz'ibajom, an organization dedicated to preserving
and promoting Indigenous languages, literacy,
and cultures in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico,
and the University of Arizona Poetry Center,
a world-renowned institution that surely needs no
introduction to all of you.
In partnership with the Poetry Center,
the Center on Literary Arts will sponsor a reading
by one of the writers from our fellowship
list in the annual Poetry Center Reading Series.
Last year in the inaugural event,
the writer was an old friend of the Poetry Center, Luis Alberto
Urrea.
And this year the Borchard Center on Literary Arts
is thrilled to help host another old friend
of the Poetry Center, poet and national treasure, Rita Dove.
Yeah, please.
[APPLAUSE]
While there is only one Rita Dove,
it is our sincere hope that in the years to come,
this partnership will bring many other writers of vision,
humanity, and gravitas to this acclaimed series and the people
of Tucson.
I thank you and I hope you enjoy tonight's event.