Join us on Thursday, March 21st—World Poetry Day— at 7:00pm for a celebration with Madison's newest Poet Laureate, Steven Espada Dawson. Dawson will read alongside '20 – '24 Poet Laureate, Angie Trudell Vasquez, and poet Chessy Normile, author of Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party. The reading will be followed by a short Q&A and casual reception. This event is sponsored by Arts + Literature Laboratory and Madison Arts Commision.
Madison Poet Laureate Debut Gala
Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Ruth Lilly Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. He has served as a poetry editor for Copper Nickel and Sycamore Review and has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country. His work appears in Guernica, Gulf Coast, and Kenyon Review. His poems have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as Poet Laureate.
Photo by Taylor Kirby
Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez is a 2nd and 3rd generation Mexican-American writer, editor, publisher, and the former Poet Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin (2020-2024). She holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Finishing Line Press published her collections, In Light, Always Light, in May 2019, and My People Redux, in January 2022. In 2021, she attended the Macondo Writers Workshop started by Sandra Cisneros, and became a fellow, also known as a Macondista. In 2020 she published and co-edited a poetry anthology of Wisconsin poets, Through This Door, through her small press Art Night Books.
Portrait by Nicole Taylor
Chessy Normile is the author of Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party, selected by Li-Young Lee for the 2020 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. She received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and was most recently the 2022-2023 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She edits a zine series called Girl Blood Info.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.