Past Event
From the Womb of Sky and Earth Book Reading
About
Through intimate lyrical prose and fractured, nonlinear snapshots, From the Womb of Sky and Earth recounts a poet’s coming-of-age journey through a maze of abusive relationships, mental illness, and hard-won autonomy, resilience, and self-discovery through motherhood. Author and Houston Poet Laureate Emeritus Leslie Contreras Schwartz will be joined by Dr. Stalina Villarreal and Reyes Ramirez.
About the readers:
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is the 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, the 2019-2021 Houston Poet Laureate, and the author of the 2022 C&R Press Nonfiction Prize Winner From the Womb of Sky and Earth, a lyrical memoir. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Black Dove / Paloma Negra (FlowerSong Press, 2020). Contreras Schwartz is currently a poetry and nonfiction faculty member at Alma College’s MFA low-residency program in creative writing. Headshot courtesy of Pin Lim.
Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (she/they) is a poet, essayist, translator, sonic improviser, and assistant professor of English. Her debut collection of poetry and nonfiction—Watcha—is forthcoming from Deep Vellum Publishing, and they have published translations of poetry.
Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. He authored the short story collection The Book of Wanderers (2022), a 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist, from University of Arizona Press’ Camino del Sol series and the poetry collection El Rey of Gold Teeth (2023) from Hub City Press.