Phillips Exeter Academy opens its 2018–2019 Lamont Poetry Series on Wednesday October 10th with a reading by award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez.
Alvarez is the author of four collections of poetry The Other Side / El Otro Lado (1995), Homecoming (1996), Seven Trees (1998), and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004); several books including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (winner of the 1991 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award ), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), Yo! (American Library Association notable book), and Once Upon a Quinceañera (2007); plus numerous essays.
Her work has earned her frequent awards, including the 2009 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in American Literature as well as the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. Alvarez has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and her work has often been a selection for the One Book/One City national program. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her work was featured in the 1996 New York Public Library exhibit, “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, From John Donne to Julia Alvarez. In 1974 she received the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, first prize in narrative from the Third Woman Press Award in 1986, and an award from the General Electric Foundation in 1986.
Alvarez received her Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude from Middlebury College and also attended Syracuse University, from which she received her M.F.A. She has taught at Phillips Andover Academy, the University of Illinois, George Washington University, the University of Vermont, and Middlebury College. In addition, Alvarez has served as Poet-in-the-Schools in Kentucky, Delaware and North Carolina. She is currently a writer in residence at Middlebury College.
The reading will be held in the Assembly Hall, located on the second floor of the Academy Building on Front Street. The event begins at 7:30pm and is free and open to the public.
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