A reading from the recent memoirs of two writers best known for their work in other genres. In Mark Doty’s Dog Years, Doty recounts how the love of two dogs, Arden and Beau, sustained him during times of his most grievous losses, and how he, in turn, came to nurse them through their inevitable years of failing health. Rigoberto González’s Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, is an eloquent memoir of a first generation Mexican- American’s coming of age and coming out.
Mark
Doty, the only American poet to have won Great Britain’s T. S. Eliot
Prize, is the author of six books of poems, including My Alexandria
(1993), which received both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and
the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent volume of poems
is the critically acclaimed School of the Arts, published in 2005
by HarperCollins. Doty is the author of two previous memoirs, Heaven’s
Coast (1996) and Firebird (1999). His interest in the visual
arts is evident not only in his poems but also in his book-length essay
“Still Life with Oysters and Lemon” (2001). Among his many awards are
two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships,
a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize. Doty
teaches in the graduate program the University of Houston, and is a frequent
guest at Columbia University, Hunter College, and NYU. He lives in Houston
and in New York City.
Rigoberto
González is the author of two poetry books, So Often the Pitcher
Goes to Water until It Breaks, a National Poetry Series selection,
and Other Fugitives and Other Strangers; two bilingual children’s
books: Soledad Sigh-Sighs/ Soledad Suspiros and Antonio’s Card/
La tarjeta de Antonio, finalist for a Lambda Literary Award; and the
novel Crossing Vines, winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Fiction
Book of the Year Award. He is the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships,
and of various international artist residencies, including stays in Spain,
Brazil, Costa Rica, Scotland and Switzerland. González writes a bimonthly
Latino book column for the El Paso Times, he is contributing editor
for Poets and Writers Magazine, on the Board of Directors of the
National Book Critics Circle, on the Board of Directors of Fishouse Poems:
A Poetry Archive, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective
of Chicano/ Latino activist writers. He lives in New York City and teaches
at the MFA writing programs of both Queens College and Rutgers University-Newark.
All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.
Suggested
Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)
Programs and events at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, the Orchard Foundation, and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of the Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government.