Join us for a reading with Michelle Peñaloza for her debut poetry collection, Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, which won the 2019 Hillary Gravendyk National Prize through Inlandia Books!

Muriel Leung, MT Vallarta and Annette Wong will also be reading their poems in celebration!

About Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, Barbara Jane Reyes, author of Poeta en San Francisco and Invocation to Daughters, writes: "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."

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Oceanic, calls Peñaloza's book "ambitious" and "remarkable" and says "Of this I am certain: I’ll be celebrating this poet for many years to come."

Garrett Hongo, author of Coral Road, praises the book and writes: "As an heraldic preface to her wondrous new volume, Michelle Peñaloza asks of her poetry a profound question—How do children born of empire // once removed // possess the history // of their naming? ...The book is a colorful and complex mosaic of re-possession, a repairing of an uprooted history, and Penaloza’s own passionate monody of praise for all that was lost."