Event Details
Mon, June 04, 2018
18:30 – 19:30
LIMONAIA
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, Italia
Poetry readings by Nicole Sealey and John Murillo.
Poetry Readings and Conversation
Mon, June 04, 2018
18:30 – 19:30
LIMONAIA
Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, Italia
Poetry readings by Nicole Sealey and John Murillo.
Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, 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 and the 2018-2019 Doris Lippman Visiting Poet at The City College of New York.
The son of an African-American father and a Mexican mother, poet and playwright John Murillo grew up in Los Angeles. He was educated at Howard University and New York University, where he earned an MFA. Murillo makes use of both formal and free verse as he engages themes of family history and personal identity. In a Q&A with the Poetry Society of America, Murillo states, “I write, first of all, in the tradition of the witness.”
Murillo’s debut poetry collection, Up Jump the Boogie (2010) was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and was also named one of Huffington Post’s “Ten Recent Books of Poetry You Should Read Right Now.” Murillo’s poetry has also been included in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African American Poetry (2013, edited by Charles Henry Rowell). His choreo-play Trigger premiered with the Edgeworks Dance Theater in 2011.
Murillo’s additional honors include two Larry Neal Writers Awards, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the New York Times. Murillo lives in Brooklyn. He teaches at Hampshire College and New York University.