POETS BUILDING BRIDGES Boricua NYC, Costa Rica, NYC/.Brevitas

George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season two of POETS BUILDING BRIDGES: A TRIANGULATION PROJECT, inaugurated in March 2022 with the purpose of enhancing dialogue between communities of writers across the US and internationally. Based on a shared small-group experience, these Saturday zoom sessions engage three distinct and well defined communities of poets with each other to share work and foster further interaction. THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT.

Boricua NYC:  Vincent Toro  |  Ana Portnoy Brimmer  |  Malcolm Friend

Vincent Toro is the author of two poetry collections: Tertulia and Stereo.Island.Mosaic, which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Vincent is a recipient of the Caribbean Writer’s Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize, the Spanish Repertory Theater’s Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award, a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellowship, a New York Council for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a New Jersey State Council for the Arts Writer’s Fellowship. His poetry and prose have been published in dozens of magazines and journals and has been anthologized in Saul Williams’ CHORUS, Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon, Best American Experimental Writing 2015, and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Rider University, is a Dodge Foundation Poet, and is a contributing editor for Kweli Literary Journal. His third poetry book, HIVESTRUCK, is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in 2024.

Ana Portnoy Brimmer is a poet and organizer from Puerto Rico. She holds a BA and an MA  from the University of Puerto Rico, and is an alumna of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. To Love an Island, her debut poetry collection, was originally the winner of YesYes Books’ 2019 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest. The Spanish edition is forthcoming from La Impresora. Ana is the winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest 2020, and was named one of Poets & Writers 2021 Debut Poets. She is the daughter of Mexican-Jewish immigrants, resides in Puerto Rico and finds hope in the poetics of dance parties and revolution. (es poeta y organizadora de Puerto Rico. Obtuvo su bachillerato y maestría de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, y es egresada del MFA en Escritura Creativa de Rutgers University-Newark. To Love an Island, su primera colección de poesía, fue originalmente ganadora del premio Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest 2019 de YesYes Books. La edición en Español del libro está próxima a salir con La Impresora. Ana es ganadora del premio 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest 2020 y fue nombrada una de les Poets & Writers 2021 Debut Poets. Es hija de inmigrantes Mexicanxs-Judixs, reside en Puerto Rico y encuentra esperanza en la poética del bailoteo y la revolución.)

Malcolm Friend received his BA from Vanderbilt University, where he was the 2014 recipient of the Merrill Moore Prize for Poetry, and his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of the chapbook mxd kd mixtape and the full length collection Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple, selected by Cynthia Arrieu-King as winner of the 2017 Hillary Gravendyk Prize. He has received awards and fellowships from organizations including CantoMundo, Backbone Press, the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics, The Frost Place, and the University of Memphis. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including La Respuesta magazine, the Fjords Review’s Black American Edition, Vinyl, Word Riot, The Acentos Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, and Pretty Owl Poetry. He is a Poetry Editor for FreezeRay Poetry, and together with JR Mahung is a member of Black Plantains, an Afrocaribbean poetry collective. He currently lives and teaches in Austin.

Costa Rica: Maria Sucerquia  |  Marisa Russo  |  Nidia Martina Gonzalez  |  Luissiana Naranjo Abarca

María Del Castillo Sucerquia (Barranquilla, Colombia – 1997). Poet, literary agent, tutor, eastern doctor (Neijing, Spain) and translator (French, English, Italian, Russian and Greek). She learned languages at the Universidad del Atlántico. Honorary doctorate in Transcendental Humanism from the Academy, Arts, Culture and Culture of Peace (AHCASA Morocco-Mexico Alliance, 2021). Hebrew language student. Winner of the Naji Naaman poetry prize, Creativity prize category, (Lebanon, 2022); the Kasi Nazrul Islam Birth Anniversary Award (Bangladesh, 2022); of the prize “A poem for Meira Delmar – 2022 (Meira Delmar Library, Barranquilla, Colombia); the Golden Heart award, granted by the Rahim Karim Karimov International Foundation (Russia – Kyrgyzstan, 2022), in recognition of her literary and translation work; of the first place in the VII “Jorge García Usta” Award (PoemaRío International Festival – Pilot Library of the Caribbean) with hir book “The Silenced Train”, among others. Director of Read Carpet Colombia magazine. Curator, translator and collaborator of national and international  literary magazines and journals.

Marisa Russo (Buenos Aires, Argentina). Poet, editor, cultural manager and professor at Hunter College, City University of New York.  Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Hispano-American and Peninsular Literature at Hunter College of the City University of New York.Doctoral candidate at La Salle University in Education, Costa Rica. Founder of Turrialba Literaria. Executive Director and Founder of New York Poetry Press, Editor-in-Chief of New York Poetry Review. Her work has been translated into English and appears in several anthologies and literary magazines. Director of the New York City Latin American Poetry Festival and president of FIP Turrialba, Costa Rica, Publications: El idioma de los parques / The Language of the Parks (2018) Honorable Mention International Latino Book Awards – Best Poetry Book, Jardines Colganes (2020) and El cielo comienza en las raíces (2020) and Del libro de cuentos inventados por mamá: La joven ombú (2020).

Nidia Marina González Vásquez. Plastic artist, University of Costa Rica professor, and poet. She has exhibited artwork in mixed media, collage, drawing, and watercolor. Winner of poetry competitions. Included in: Antología de poetas ramonenses (Anthology of San Ramón Poets, 1990); Voces tatuadas, crónica de la poesía costarricense, 1970–2004 (Tattooed Voices, Chronicle of Costa Rican Poetry, 1970–2004, 2004); Sostener la palabra (Sustaining the Word, 2007); Mujeres poetas en el País de las Nubes (México)(Women Poets in the Land of Clouds, Mexico, 2008); Poesía del Encuentro (Poetry of the Encounter, 2010); Al hidalgo poeta (To the Noble Poet, XIX Meeting of Ibero-American Poets, Salamanca, 2017). Publications: Cuando nace el grito (When the Cry is Born, 1985); Brújula extendida (Extended Compass, 2013); Seres apócrifos (Apocryphal Beings, 2015); Objetos perdidos(Lost Objects, 2015); Bitácora de escritorio y otros viajes (Desktop Log and Other Journeys, 2016; La estática del fuego (The Static of Fire, 2019), Árbol de papel (Paper tree, 2019) Zurda (Left-handed, 2022) and Anamnesis (Anamnesis, 2022), winner of the Latin American poetry Fist Price Marta Eugenia Santamaría María Marín.

Luissiana Naranjo Abarca (1968) Costa Rica Poet and writer, editor, cultural promoter, workshop leader, Literary critic. Masters in  Educational Administration. Studied journalism, linguistics, and art. Founder of the Free words project to teach poetry to prisoners and former prisoners. Editor of literary publications for patients with cancer and children at high risk, on environmental conservation and mestization, promoted by PANIAMOR and UNESCO in the international year of peace. Author of educational texts Eduvision Publishing and children’s literature, with her poem “Blue Marble” for the EUNED Mapachin series. She has published five poetry books and has been translated and included in several Latin American anthologies. Currently, she organizes every year an international gathering named: The poet and the environment.

NYC/.Brevitas:  Ron Kolm  |  Austin Alexis  |  Amy Barone  |  Karen Neuberg

Ron Kolm is a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin. Ron is the author of Divine Comedy, Suburban Ambush, A Change in the Weather, Welcome to the Barbecue and Swimming in the Shallow End. He’s had work in The Café Review, Gathering of the Tribes, Great Weather for Media, Maintenant, Live Mag!, Local Knowledge, NYC From the Inside, the Poets of Queens anthology, The Red Wheelbarrow, the Riverside Poets Anthology, The Silver Tongued Devil anthology, Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts Omnibus and the Brownstone Poets anthologies. 

Austin Alexis is the author of the full-length collection Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014, Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award) and two previously published chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada. He has work published in or scheduled to appear in Barrow Street, The Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Plath Profiles, Mid-American Review, Poetica Review (UK), American Book Review, Poetry Pacific, Flash Boulevard, and elsewhere. He won Honorable Mention in the 2022 Writer’s Digest 91^st Annual Writing Competition (playwriting category), and has received awards from Conceit Magazine, Great Weather for Media (flash fiction), and Vermont Studio Center.

Amy Barone’s new poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books released her collection, We Became Summer, in 2018. She belongs to the Poetry Society of America and the Brevitas online poetry community. From Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City.

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press) and three chapbooks including the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre). Her poems have appeared in several anthologies including I Wanna Be Loved By You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Great Weather for MEDIA’S 2020 anthology Escape Wheel, First Water: The Best of Pirene’s Fountain, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, and Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents, as well as in numerous literary journals including Big City Lit, MAINTENANT 16 A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, Nixes Mate, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the New School, is associate editor of the online poetry journal First Literary Review-East, and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

For more information: https://waltwhitman.org/poets-building-bridges-boricua-nyc-costa-rica-nyc-brevitas

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POETS BUILDING BRIDGES is produced by Poetrybay Productions for the Walt Whitman Birthplace.