Xochiquetzal Candelaria and Robin Ekiss

7 AUGUST 2011 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Empire, and Robin Ekiss, The Mansion of Happiness, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com; wheelchair accessible, ASL interpreters for the deaf and hearing impaired may be requested a week in advance by email, editor@poetryflash.org)

More about the readers
Xochiquetzal Candelaria's debut book of poems is Empire. Cathy Park Hong says, "Empire is a sensuous and lucid meditation on lineage from the haunting and mythic narratives of her ancestry to her tautly drawn memories of growing up in California. It is a book of tender and deeply imagined songs." Among her honors are a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, the Louisiana Prize for Poetry, and the 2006 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize.

Robin Ekiss's first book of poems is The Mansion of Happiness. Carl Phillips says, "The Mansion of Happiness is a wondrous, instructive, and everywhere graceful book, and marks the arrival of a confident and haunting new voice." She is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University; the Rona Jaffe Award for emerging women writers and the 2010 Shenandoah/ Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers are among her honors.