EventsCommon Ground#853

Publishing-in-Transit: 92nd Street Y

Featuring Bernard Schwartz, Ricardo Maldonado, and Cole Swensen

Thursday, July 13, 2023 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.

Unterberg Poetry Center Director Bernard Schwartz and Academy of American Poets Executive Director & President Ricardo Maldonado join Rail contributor Cole Swensen for a conversation and reading.

In this Talk

More on the 92nd Street Y's Unterberg Poetry Center →

Ricardo Alberto Maldonado

Photo by Eric McNatt

Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. His books include The Life Assignment (Four Way Books, 2020), which was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, among other recognitions. Maldonado is the board chair of the Poetry Project and serves on the board of directors of NYFA and the Poetry Committee of the Brooklyn Book Festival. He is the recipient of fellowships from numerous foundations, and is currently part of El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña / The Puerto Rican Literature Project, a forthcoming online database collecting the creative output of Puerto Rican poets in the diaspora and archipelago. In June 2023, Maldonado was named the next Executive Director and President of the Academy of American Poets.

ricarditomaldonado

Bernard Schwartz

Bernard Schwartz is co-director of 92NY’s Unterberg Poetry Center, where he has worked since 2005. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and LitHub.

Cole Swensen

Photo by Anthony Hayward

Cole Swensen is the author of twenty volumes of poetry, most recently And And And (Shearsman Books, 2023), which was long-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. A book of hybrid poem-essays, Art in Time, was published by Nightboat in 2021. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the LA Times Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over twenty volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and won the 2024 ALTA National Translation Award and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Translation Award.

We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨