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OCTOBER 29, 2009 ISSUE

Poet Isel Rivero Presents Reading Thursday at ASU

Cuban-born poet Isel Rivero will read from her work Thursday, October 29, at ASU. The reading begins at 7:00 p.m. in Belk Library and Information Commons room 114. The public is welcome.

In addition to the reading, Rivero will meet with faculty and students Friday, October 30, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. in Plemmons Student Union’s Watauga Room.

Widely published in Latin America and Spain, Rivero’s first book, a collection of poems titled “Fantasías de la Noche,” was followed by “La Marcha de los Hurones, Tundra” (translated to French), “El Banquete: Poema” and “Night Rained Her: Poems” (also translated to German), and “Las noches del Cuervo.”

In 2000, her poetry written in Spanish was collected under the title “Relato del Horizonte.” A translation of her collected English poetry will be published in Spain translated by Benito del Pliego, an associate professor of Spanish at ASU.

Rivero gave poetry readings during the 1980s in Africa and in the early 1990s in Central America, as she combined her vocation as a poet with her professional life as an international civil servant with the United Nations from 1968 to 2002.

She was involved in Namibia and Honduras and Central Africa as political consultant with the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations. In this capacity, she participated in negotiations to try to avert the 1995 Rwandan Genocide. From 1996 until her retirement in 2002, she was the director of the United Nations Information Centre in Madrid, where she sponsored several activities related to women’s human rights and poetry.

She was a contributor to Sisterhood is Global, the history-making women’s world anthology prepared in 1985 by the American author Robin Morgan, and has written for Ms. Magazine. In 2006 the Spanish Federación de Mujeres Progresistas presented her with the Julia Mayoral Prize in recognition for a life dedicated to women’s causes.

Rivero’s presentations are sponsored by Appalachian’s Global Studies Program, University College and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.