Florida's Spoken Word Café at SoBe's Art Center

The Spoken Word Café to SHOWCASE

NEW VOICE IN LATINA FICTION AS IT
HOSTS NY-DOMINICAN ANGIE CRUZ AT Art Center/South Florida

Wednesday, March 15th at 7:30 p.m.

The Spoken Word Café will host breakthrough Latina talent Angie Cruz
along with MDC professor and poet Michael Hettich on Wednesday,
March 15th, at 7:30 p.m. at the Art Center/South Florida's gallery,
800 Lincoln Road, on the corner of Meridian Avenue, in Miami Beach.
Cruz will read from her Let it Rain Coffee, where she tells the
story of the Colón family, Domini­can Republic immigrants chasing the
American dream in New York. Hettich will recite some of the work in
his new book of poems, Flock and Shadow.

Cruz, a New York-born Dominican, captured the raging cultural
conflicts of Dominican immigrants, and established herself as a
gifted new voice in Latina fiction with her debut novel Soledad. The
New York Times Book Review wrote of Cruz, "There are interludes
reminiscent of Garcia Marquez...and others that reveal Cruz's own
distinctive narrative gifts." Her latest novel, Let it Rain Coffee,
gracefully illuminates lives marked by longing and hardship,
alternating between two very different places, the lush valley of
Los Llanos, D.R., during the revolutionary days of the 1960s, and
the tough streets of Nueva York in the 1990s.                       

Cruz is the recipient of numerous awards for her activist and
literary work, including, The Camargo Foundation Fellowship, The New
York Foundations of the Arts Fellowship and The Barbara Deming
Memorial Fund.  She wrote four made-for-television children stories
featured on BET's Saturday morning show, Story Porch.  In 1997,
while enrolled in the MFA program at New York University, Cruz co-
founded WILL: Women In Literature & Letters, a women-of-color-
centered collective dedicated to the transformation of society,
producing readings and writing workshops. For the past four years
she has divided her time between New York, Dominican Republic and
Europe. 

Hettich published two books in 2005: Swimmer Dreams (which won the
Tales Prize from Turning Point Press) and Flock and Shadow: New and
Selected Poems. His work has appeared in numerous journals,
including The Literary Review, New Letters, Poetry East,
TriQuarterly, Hayden's Ferry review and etc. He teaches English and
Creative Writing at MDC/Wolfson.

Spoken Word Café presents Novelists Angie Cruz and Michael
Hettich
Wednesday, March 15th, at 7:30 p.m.
Art Center/South Florida, 800 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

The Spoken Word Café, a regularly scheduled arts encounter for South
Florida's hottest musical and literary talent, was created by The
Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College. Lovers
of the spoken word, poetry, and prose are always welcome at the
regularly scheduled meeting, the third Wednesday of each month.

More Event Information: Visit http://www.flcenterlitarts.com, or
call the Florida Center for the
Literary Arts at (305) 237-3940.

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