From Watershed Literary Events:
Watershed Literary Events kicks off its 2024 season with a reading by poets Roberto Carlos Garcia, Ysabel González, and Jared Harél. The event takes place on Sunday, March 10, at 3 pm, in the South Orange Skate House and is sponsored by the Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs and the Meadowland Park Conservancy in South Orange. All Watershed events are free and open to the public.
Roberto Carlos Garcia, an associate professor of English at Union College of Union County, writes about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-Diasporic experience. His work has been published in Poetry, NACLA, Poets & Writers, The Root, and others. Garcia is a 2023 New Jersey State Council of the Arts Poetry Fellow and the author of four poetry collections: Melancolía (Cervena Barva Press, 2016), black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018), [Elegies] (Flower Song Press, 2020), and What Can I Tell You: Selected Poems (Flower Song Press, 2022). He has also written an essay collection, Traveling Freely, forthcoming in 2024 from Curbstone Books / Northwestern University Press. Garcia is the founder of Get Fresh Books Publishing.
Ysabel Y. González, a Newark native, received her BA from Rutgers University, an MFA in Poetry from Drew University, and works as the Poetry Creative Officer at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Ysabel has received invitations to attend VONA, Tin House, CantoMundo, and BOAAT Press workshops. In her work, Ysabel explores her neurodivergence, Borinquen roots, and how to engage with tenderness in a complicated world. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of Wild Invocations (Get Fresh Books, 2019). She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two fur babies, crafting, tending to her garden, and reading tarot. Visit www.ysabelgonzalez.com for more.
Jared Harél is the author, most recently, of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, which was selected by Kwame Dawes as the Winner of the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2023). He’s been awarded the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review, as well as the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review. Harél’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, NY, with his wife and two kids. For more information, visit: jaredharel.com
Now in its sixth year of programming, Watershed Literary Events promotes the work of a talented and diverse array of writers with a New Jersey connection. For more information, contact Blake Smith at arts@southorange.org
