Please welcome our new Washington State Poet Laureate, Claudia Castro Luna, to the Lopez Library. She is the Lopez Library’s 2018 Poet-in-Residence and will lead three programs:
Poetry Workshop
Thursday, April 26th, 2 – 4pm, Library Community Room
Free poetry workshop – this is our “Lopez Writes” program this month. No registration required, come early to get a seat.
Poetry Reading & Lecture
Thursday, April 26th, 7pm, Library Fireside
Enjoy poetry and stories from Claudia Castro Luna in an intimate setting. Light refreshments served.
Poesía en el parque (Spanish)
Sunday, April 29th, 11am – 1pm, Odlin County Park
Castro Luna will lead families on walks through the park, and we will write and read poetry together. Please bring a sack lunch for your family. Rain or shine! All ages welcome. Meet at the Odlin Park picnic shelter at 11am. This program will be conducted in Spanish. Co-sponsored by San Juan County Parks.
About Claudia Castro Luna:
As the first immigrant and woman of color to assume the role of Washington State Poet Laureate, Castro Luna will be advocating for poetry during a particularly fraught period for both the humanities (the current administration proposed eliminating the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities last year) and immigrant populations, who are confronting uncertainty in the face of travel bans and heated rhetoric.
Castro Luna fled war-torn El Salvador for the United States at the age of 14 with her family, and went on to earn an MFA in poetry and an MA in urban planning. After working as a K-12 teacher, she became Seattle’s first Civic Poet, a position appointed by the mayor. In that position, Castro Luna won acclaim for her Seattle Poetic Grid, an online interactive map of showcasing poems about different locations around the city. The grid landed her an interview on PBS NewsHour. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook This City and the collection Killing Marías.
All of the programs are sponsored by the Friends of the Lopez Island Library through a grant from Humanities Washington and the Washington State Arts Commission (ArtsWA).
