Día de los Muertos: Carmen Giménez Smith & Dana Levin

Brought to you by St. Louis Poetry Center, this special event is presented at Kranzberg Arts Center Studio as part of First Fridays in Grand Center and will feature Carmen Giménez Smith and Dana Levin.  The event will start with a happy hour at 6:00 p.m. Reading begins at 7:00 p.m.

Dana Levin and Carmen Giménez Smith call forth the spirits in this special reading to honor Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead.  Levin will read from her latest books Banana Palace and Sky Burial, which the New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.”  Smith’s latest book Be Recorder is a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award.  NPR says, “Her most ambitious book to date, (Smith) presents a new ‘context for the twenty-first century Latina lyric I,’ the fierce and undaunted voice that speaks her poems.”

DANA LEVIN is the author of four books of poetry, including Banana Palace, a finalist for the Rilke Prize.  A grateful recipient of honors from the NEA, PEN, and the Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim Foundations, she serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis.

CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH is the author of six books, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, and Bring Down the Little Birds, winner of the American Book Award. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches at Virginia Tech University.