Hello, everybody.
Welcome.
How are you all?
Good.
Happy Thursday.
Glad you guys are here.
You're making an excellent choice
on a Thursday night for translation.
And I'm glad you're here.
Welcome to the Poetry Center.
My name is Tyler.
I work here as the director at the Poetry Center.
You are here.
How many are-- well, how many of you have been to other readings
this spring at the Poetry Center?
Good work.
OK, excellent.
If you haven't, it's OK.
But there'll be more chances for you, but not this season.
This is our last visit from a visiting writer in the spring.
So round of applause for a lot of good things
that have happened this spring at the Poetry Center.
[APPLAUSE]
This, of course, is a team effort.
And a lot of people work on it.
And so I will ask you to applaud again
for Bruno Ingram, who does all the work to make
the readings sound good and look good and record well,
and we're really grateful for it.
Bruno, thank you for all that you do.
It's a great gift.
We love working with you.
And then likewise, one more big round of applause
for my colleague, Paola Valenzuela, who's right here.
Will you wave.
[LAUGHS]
Paola is amazing.
And the visits that happened at the Poetry Center
are largely possible because Paola has done a ton of work
making sure writers get here safely,
that they have a good time while they're here,
that they get home safely, among many other things
that Paola does.
So it's a great gift to work with Paola every day.
And it's a joy and looking forward
to all that comes up ahead.
This reading tonight is a collaboration
with the Creative Writing program at the University
of Arizona, and we're really pleased to be in partnership
with them in all the ways that we are,
and for their support of what happens at the Poetry Center.
And we'll hear from my colleague Manuel Muñoz in a little bit
more about that.
We also want to thank the Borchard Center on the Literary
Arts for their support of this reading and for all
that they do for the literary arts in general,
which is a great gift as well.
So just a couple of things to tell you about.
Again, this is our last visit from a visiting writer,
but it is not the last thing that's happening at the Poetry
Center this season.
So on Saturday, the 3rd, this Saturday,
there's a reading here at the Poetry Center at noon.
And that's from our Classes and Workshops program.
And those are for people that have participated
in that program and the faculty that
have taught in that program.
And you can hear from students, and they'll
read from their work.
That's back here at noon on Saturday, the 3rd.
On the 10th, a week later on Saturday,
we'll be back here again for the graduation reading for the MFA
program.
And so this is a chance to hear from the writers
that we'll be hearing from in the next decades.
And you can hear them here first.
So they'll be reading from their theses.
You can help celebrate them and the work
that they've done and the program here.
That's 10:00-- I'm sorry, May 10 at noon back here at the Poetry
Center.
And everyone is welcome.
And then the last event of the season
before a little bit of time, we'll be closed.
And I'll talk about in a moment is on May 17.
And that's our annual anthology launch for the citywide Youth
Anthologies that our K through 12 programs create.
If you've ever seen these, they're amazing.
It's a beautiful book, where each student who
participates in those programs gets to publish
one poem in an anthology.
We have a book launch here at the center.
They come up here and read from their work,
just like all the other poets who come through town.
And it's been a great gift to have that program happen.
This year, we were in 33 different classrooms.
And each of those classrooms had a chance
to have a visiting teaching artist for eight weeks.
And each of the students gets to choose the work that
will be in the book.
So if you're interested in that kind of thing
or want to have a delightful experience in general
in the middle of May, come back.
That's at 9:00 o'clock on the 17th,
back here at the Poetry Center.
Immediately after that, we're going
to be closed for a little while.
And if you haven't heard this message yet,
we're excited about this project.
To my right outside of the Poetry Center,
there is a very ugly alley, that is going away
and is going to be replaced with a park-like space
and a whole new outdoors area.
And so that will begin on May 20.
And that work will proceed throughout the summer.
The Poetry Center will be closed for the end of May, all of June
and the beginning of July.
We're going to reopen to the public on July 8.
Construction will keep happening,
but it will be the quieter parts of construction.
So while it's loudest and dustiest,
we're going to take a break and then come back in the summer.
We're looking forward to seeing you then and then
looking forward to welcoming everyone back in the fall
to a really beautiful new space that will open up
a lot of new possibilities for how work happens here
at the Poetry Center.
So that is a quick list of everything that's coming up.
There's some great summer programs that are happening.
Our calendar is going to be coming to your mailboxes
very soon.
That information is going to be on our website
and in our newsletter soon as well.
And hope you'll take advantage of some of those programs, too.
To help welcome Natasha Wimmer, who we're so happy
is here visiting us in Tucson, an amazing translator,
who does an incredible work.
I want to welcome up my colleague Manuel
Muñoz to introduce Natasha.
Manuel has helped organize this event.
He's the author of the novel, What
You See in the Dark, and the story collections, Zigzagger
and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue.
And these three earlier works are
being reprinted by Triquarterly Books, which
is an imprint of Northwestern University Press, which
is awesome and deserves its own round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
His most recent collection of stories
is called The Consequences, and it is an amazing book.
Please help me welcome my colleague, Manuel Muñoz.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.