2021 National Poetry Series Winner Alexandra Lytton Regalado

Name: 2021 National Poetry Series Winner Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Start: 2022-11-16T12:00:00-05:00
End: 2022-11-16T13:00:00-05:00
Location: On Demand

Author:

Lytton Regalado, Alexandra, Betts, Reginald Dwayne, Halpern, Daniel

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The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to recognize and promote excellence in contemporary poetry by ensuring the publication of five books of poetry annually through participating publishers. In addition, the National Poetry Series has partnered with Miami Book Fair to award the Paz Prize in Poetry, which ensures bilingual publication for a book of poems written in Spanish. This conversation features Alexandra Lytton Regalado on Relinquenda: Poems, speaking with the judge who selected her manuscript, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon: Poems. When COVID-19 broke and the United States closed the border to travel, Alexandra Lytton Regalado was separated from family back in El Salvador. She wrote Relinquenda entirely during lockdown as a meditation on cancer, the passing of her father, and the renewed significance of community. Situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami, Florida and El Salvador, the poems also negotiate the meaning of home, reflecting on immigration and the ties between the United States and El Salvador 30 years after her birth country’s decade-long civil war. With a special introduction by Daniel Halpern, founder of HarperCollins imprint Ecco and the National Poetry Series.

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Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Lytton Regalado, Alexandra

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is the author of the poetry collection Matria, which won the St. Lawrence Book Award. She is co-director of Editorial Kalina and editor of Puntos de Fuga/Vanishing Points (Editorial Kalina, 2017), a bilingual anthology of contemporary Salvadoran prose. She lives in Miami and San Salvador, El Salvador. When COVID-19 broke out and the United States closed the border to travel, Lytton Regalado was separated from her family in El Salvador. Written entirely during the lockdown, the poems in Relinquenda (Beacon Press) are a meditation on illness, the passing of her father, and the renewed significance of community. The central part of the collection focuses on her father during his six-year struggle with cancer and explores how it might serve as a mirror and warning. Other poems address what it means for daughters, mothers, and wives to care for one another as reflected in her relationships with the men in her life. Situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami and El Salvador, the poems also negotiate the meaning of home, reflecting on immigration and the ties between the U.S. and El Salvador 30 years after her birth country’s decadelong civil war.

Betts, Reginald Dwayne

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and prison reform advocate. A MacArthur fellow, he is the author of the collection Felon: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company), addressing the effects of incarceration and life post-incarceration. Betts is also the founder and executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit transforming access to literature in prisons by installing Freedom Libraries across the country. He will be at Miami Book Fair 2022 to lead a conversation with Salvadorean-born Alexandra Lytton Regalado, author of Relinquenda (Beacon Press) and co-director of Editorial Kalina, as part of the Fair’s National Poetry Series program.

Halpern, Daniel

Daniel Halpern is the author of eight collections of poetry, and has received numerous grants and awards (including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the 1993 PEN Publisher Citation). For twenty-five years he edited the literary magazine Antaeus. He is currently Editorial Director of The Ecco Press/HarperCollins.

2021 National Poetry Series Winner Alexandra Lytton Regalado