Author and poet Jose Olivarez will be in town Saturday, Feb. 22, for a poetry workshop and reading at The Edney, 1100 Market St. His visit is hosted by The Plug Poetry Project, an arts initiative founded by Christian Collier last year with the goal of increasing the local poetry community by providing resources, classes and events.
Olivarez will begin his visit with a free poetry workshop from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday. Spaces for this workshop have filled up. However, there are still seats available for a reading from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. that night. Local poets Molly King and Tiffany Herron will open the night with sets of original material.
Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants and author of the book of poems, "Citizen Illegal," a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
In 2018, he was awarded the first Author and Artist in Justice Award from Phillips Brooks House Association. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he is co-editing the anthology, "The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT."
Olivarez is the co-host of the poetry podcast, "The Poetry Gods." He received the 2019 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review and Chicago Magazine.