Join us for an intimate wine & cheese reception in our Library, for our "Meet the Artist" with Artists in Residence, poet Layla Benitez-James with poet and Cave Canem Director Nicole Sealey. RSVP is required to attend; click the TICKETS link to add your name to our list; space is very limited.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Layla Benitez-James is a graduate of the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program in poetry. Her poetry, interviews, reviews, and flash fiction have appeared in Acentos Review, Matter, The San Antonio Express News, The San Antonio Current, and Gulf Coast. She is currently living in Murcia, Spain, where she is translating the works of Madrid poet Óscar Curieses, along with other projects. Layla has been selected as the Cave Canem 2018 Chapbook Prize Winner.
Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors include a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, a Daniel Varoujan Award and the Poetry International Prize, as well as fellowships from CantoMundo, Cave Canem, MacDowell Colony and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming to Best American Poetry 2018, The New Yorker, The New York Times and elsewhere. Nicole holds an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is the executive director at Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.