Ray Gonzalez Poetry Reading October 26, 2006

The Latino community from Northfield, Minnesota in cooperation with ArtOrg (a community-based arts group) and Grupo Soap del Corazón (a Twin Cities-based Latino arts group) will be unveiling a 100-foot-long collaborative print made with a steamroller as a part of a month-long series of events. The celebration will be held at the Northfield Armory on Wednesday, November 1 from 6 to 9:30 pm, and will include traditional Day of the Dead breads, flowers, crafts, a community-built Ofrenda (altar) and artwork. Food will be served and music provided. Mexican Food will be served and music provided. Everyone is invited to this night of celebration.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON RAY GONZALEZ

Ray Gonzalez is the author of nine books of poetry, including four from BOA Editions--The Heat of Arrivals (1997 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award), Cabato Sentora (2000 Minnesota Book Award Finalist), The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande (winner of a 2003 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry) and Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems. Turtle Pictures (Arizona, 2000), a mixed-genre text, received the 2001 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry. His poetry has appeared in the 1999, 2000, and 2003 editions of The Best American Poetry (Scribners) and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses 2000 (Pushcart Press). He is also the author of a collection of essays, The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape (Arizona, 2002), which received the 2003 Carr P. Collins/ Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Book of Non-fiction, was named one of ten Best Southwest Books of the Year by the Arizona Humanities Commission, named one of the Best Non-fiction Books of the Year by the Rocky Mountain News, named a Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Memoir, and selected as a Book of the Month by the El Paso Public Library. His other non-fiction book is Memory Fever (University of Arizona Press, 1999), a memoir about growing up in the Southwest. He has written two collections of short stories, The Ghost of John Wayne (Arizona, 2001, winner of a 2002 Western Heritage Award for Best Short Story and a 2002 Latino Heritage Award in Literature) and Circling the Tortilla Dragon (Creative Arts, 2002). His second mixed-genre text, The Religion of Hands (volume two of the Turtle Pictures trilogy) was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2005. He is the editor of twelve anthologies, most recently No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets (Tupelo Press, 2002). He has served as Poetry Editor of The Bloomsbury Review for twenty-two years and founded LUNA, a poetry journal, in 1998. He is Full Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at The University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Official Website: http://www.artorg.info