Please Join Us for a Reading and Q&A with
Wes Matthews, Philadelphia's Youth Poet Laureate
and
Raquel Salas Rivera, Philadelphia's Poet Laureate
Thursday, January 31, 2019 | 1 to 2:30 p.m. | Pavilion Building, Klein Cube
Wes Matthews is a Detroit-born, Philadelphia-based poet and essayist. He is a two-time Brave New Voices competitor, a 2016 TEDx speaker and winner of the 2018 Philly Slam League All-Star Poetry Slam. His work has been published in several publications, including the Detroit Free Press, Eunoia Review and Dreginald Magazine. In his role as the 2018–19 Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate, he will promote poetry as a means of storytelling and social change through community events and visits to Philadelphia schools and libraries across the city.
Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018–19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the author of while they sleep (under the bed is another country) from Birds, LLC in 2019 and the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets for their book x/ex/exis. They are also the author of six chapbooks and four other full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, lo terciario/the tertiary, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist, and was selected by Remezcla, Entropy, Literary Hub, mitú, Book Riot and Publishers Weekly as one of the best poetry books of 2018. From 2016–2018, they were co-editor of The Wanderer and co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. They have received fellowships and residencies from the Sundance Institute, the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, the Arizona Poetry Center and CantoMundo. They love and live for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia and a world free of white supremacy.
Sponsored by the Community College of Philadelphia Diversity Council, in partnership with the City of Philadelphia's Poet Laureate program, managed by the Free Library of Philadelphia