"Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art"--on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum until March 2--is the inspiration for this reading, which gathers mostly DC area poets who took part in a workshop on site at the museum. The workshop was led by award-winning poets Valerie Mart�nez and Brenda C�rdenas, who have both served as Poet Laureates of Santa Fe, NM and Milwaukee, WI, respectively. Joining Mart�nez and C�rdenas at this special reading are the workshop participants:  

PINTURA : PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis aims to foster ekphrastic writing inspired by Latino art while the exhibit travels around the United States. It is a program of Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Brenda C�rdenas has authored Boomerang and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone. She also co-edited Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mind the Gap: A Portfolio of Poem-Print Translations, City Creatures: Animal Encounters in Chicago's Urban Wilderness, The Golden Shovel Anthology: Honoring the Continuing Legacy and Influence of Gwendolyn Brooks, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, Prairie Schooner, RATTLE, Pilgrimage, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. She has given readings widely, including at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Tempe Center for the Arts, Brooklyn College, The Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the Chazen Museum of Art, and the Bryant Park Reading Room. An Associate Professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, C�rdenas served as the Milwaukee Poet Laureate from 2010-2012.

Valerie Mart�nez's books include Absence, Luminescent, World to World, A Flock of Scarlet Doves, Each and Her, And They Called It Horizon, and This is How It Began. Each and Her won the 2012 Arizona Book Award. Valerie's work has been widely published, including in The Best American Poetry, Fifteen Poets of Todays' Latino Renaissance, the Washington Post, and the Poetry Foundation's Poetry Everywhere series. Valerie has more than twenty years of experience as a teacher, primarily at the college level.  For over fifteen years, she has also worked with children, youth, adults and elders in a wide range of community engagement programs. Valerie is a Director and Core Artist with Littleglobe, a non-profit based in New Mexico consisting of artists, facilitators, activists, and cultural workers devoted to building individual and community capacity through art. Learn more about Valerie at  www.valeriemartinez.net and www.littleglobe.org.