Free event, wheelchair accessible.

Michelle Peñaloza will be reading her debut collection: Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire joined by poets Cristiana Baik, Dan Lau, and Truong Tran. Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, won the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Prize through Inlandia Books.

“Michelle Peñaloza’s first collection of poems, Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, is filled with so much care and kapwa, a deep understanding of shared humanity, between generations of Filipina women and girls -- the granddaughter plucking her lola’s gray hairs, witnessing the aging, failing body with so much warmth and compassion, the daughter who knows her mother’s voice so well, that she inhabits it. Peñaloza’s poems are grounded in details, textures, and aromas, rose petals, coffee, garlic, smoothed rosary beads, old prayer books, the tangle of mangrove roots. This is an emotionally complex work, in which grief, and immigrant, diasporic confusion and rage are handled with so much wisdom. I love this book.” —Barbara Jane Reyes, Author of Poeta en San Francisco and Invocation to Daughters