For Marisela Norte,
a bus ride is poetry
at Cal State L.A. Wednesday, Nov. 7
Los Angeles, CA – With works of poetry inspired on her bus rides from East Los Angeles into downtown L.A., Cal State L.A.’s writer-in-residence Marisela Norte invites visitors to hop on for a literary journey Wednesday, Nov. 7, 6:30 p.m., at the University Club on the Cal State L.A. campus. (Refreshments will be served.)
The free poetry reading, presented by the Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics at Cal State L.A., is part of Norte’s Cal State L.A. residency. She will also lead discussions on “Multicultural Arts in Los Angeles” in creative writing, English and liberal studies classes at Cal State L.A.; and she will convey creative practices in writing poetry to Schurr High School students from Ms. Betty Harbison’s English class who will be attending the reading.
Lauri Ramey, director of Cal State L.A.’s poetry center, said, “We are honored to welcome Ms. Norte to our East Los Angeles campus as an exemplary role model from this region. Her career is a testimonial to the value of maintaining one’s roots as an artist to achieve international impact.”
Considered one of the most important literary voices to come out of East Los Angeles, Norte’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Interview, ELLE, Option, Venice, Los Angeles Weekly, Buzz, West Magazine, and Bomb. It will also appear in the upcoming issue of Propagandist. Norte has performed her work throughout California and the U.S. and most recently at the Tate Modern in London. She received the Ben Reitman Award in 2007 for the publication of her upcoming manuscript, tentatively titled East L.A. Days/Fellini Nights, by City Works Press.
Her work can also be found in the anthologies Microphone Fiends, Bordered Sexualities: Bodies on the Verge of a Nation, The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place, Rara Avis, Loca Motion: The Travels of Latina and Chicana Popular Culture, American Studies in a Moment of Danger, the American Quarterly and Rolling Stone’s Women of Rock.
Norte lives in East Los Angeles and works at MOCA, The Museum of Contemporary Art. Norte is a longtime volunteer at the ELA Women’s Center, a member of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, PEN and the Bus Riders Union. She is currently working on her fourth play, Scenes From The Dining Room, and a collection of transit prose, Strangers on the Same Train of Thought. Norte had her first solo photography exhibition, Sociedad Anónima, displayed last month at the Tropico de Nopal-Art Space in downtown L.A.
Norte’s residency is also supported by the Cal State L.A. Cross Cultural Centers, Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities, College of Arts and Letters, Department of English, and Department of Liberal Studies.
For more about Marisela Norte, go to http://www.lapena.org/nexgen/marisela_norte.html. For more on the reading, call the English Department at Cal State L.A., (323) 343-4140.
Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 200,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu
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