ILAN
STAVANS is a critic, editor, and author whose 2001 memoir,
On Borrowed Words, describes the challenge of finding his place
in the world when four different languages have at various points been
his primary language. Born in Mexico City, a descendant of Jews from Russia
and Poland, and now a professor of Latin America and Latino Cultures at
Amherst College, Stavans has often explored living “within the hyphen,”
between Latin America and the U.S., between Spanish and English and Yiddish
and Hebrew. He has traversed these multiple borders of culture and language
in many books, including The Hispanic Condition, The Riddle of Cantinflas:
Essays on Popular Hispanic Culture, and The One-Handed Pianist
and Other Stories. He is editor of the Norton Anthology of Latino
Fiction, The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories, The Oxford Book of Latin American
Essays, New World: Young Latino Writers, and more. His numerous prizes
include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Latino Literature Prize.
FRANCISCO
GOLDMAN's The Long Night of White Chickens, won the
Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters
and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award. His second novel, The
Ordinary Seaman, was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin
Fiction Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Faulkner
award. Both have been published in 10 languages. He covered Central America
in the 1980s for Harper's, and his work has appeared in The
New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times
Magazine and other magazines. He received a 1998 Guggenheim Fellowship
and was a 2000-01 fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the
NY Public Library. He holds the Allan K. Smith Chair in Literature at
Trinity College and divides his time between NYC and Mexico City.
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The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale 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 Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.