Martin Espada Keynote and Book Signing
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) program presents a keynote lecture by MARTIN ESPADA, poet, editor, essayist, and translator.
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Adanti Student Center Theater
The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program Committee is excited to announce that we will host the renowned poet Martín Espada as a guest speaker at Southern this academic year. Espada’s visit is part of our ongoing series of events centered on Latino literature, and this year, we are focusing on Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. This anthology, edited by poet and critic Rigoberto González, spans nearly five centuries of Latino poetry in the United States, showcasing the profound contributions of over 180 poets. The anthology highlights themes of identity, language, and cultural pride, engaging with the stories of immigrants, exiles, refugees, and their descendants.
This event is part of the ongoing series focused on Latino Poetry by The Library of the Americas, highlighting the significance of poetry in advancing cultural understanding and social equity. We have limited copies of the anthology available for faculty considering incorporating it into their curriculum—until supplies run out. As in previous years, we are happy to collaborate with faculty members to develop lesson plans and suggest complementary secondary sources, particularly for those who wish to engage their students in discussions about immigration, identity, and social justice. This event aims to continue and deepen the ongoing conversation initiated by previous guest speakers, including Sonia Nazario in 2020, Seth Michelson in 2021, Carl Lindskoog in 2022, Juan González in 2023, and Jenny Torres Sanchez in 2024.
About Martin Espada
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His new book of poems, Jailbreak of Sparrows, is forthcoming from Knopf in April 2025. His previous book, Floaters, won the National Book Award for Poetry and a Massachusetts Book Award. His poetry collections from Norton include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza(2003) and Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019).
Espada has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer with Su Clínica Legal in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Co-sponsored with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program by The College of Arts and Sciences, The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Minority Recruitment and Retention Committee, and the Library of the Americas.