I Lived on Butterfly Hill, by Marjorie Agosín

October 23, 2014

7:00 pm

Americas Society

680 Park Avenue

New York

(Image: Lee White)

Overview

Online registration for tonight’s program is closed. Members may arrive prior to the event and pick up their tickets, and non-members may pay at the door. Email jnegroni@as-coa.org for questions.

Chilean author and human-rights activist Marjorie Agosín will be joined by author, editor, and translator Lori Marie Carlson (A Stitch in Air) and Fran Colleti, of Facing History and Ourselves, to discuss Agosín’s young adult novel, which received starred reviews in Booklist and Publishers Weekly. The participants will also discuss young adult publishing today. Based on true events in Chile following the 1973 military coup there, I Lived on Butterfly Hill, sensitively translated by Eileen M. O’Connor, is an imaginative tour-de-force. In the author’s tale, the whole world of her protagonist, Celeste, is turned upside down as warships begin arriving in her beautiful harbor of Valparaíso and she is torn from everything she knows and loves. Co-presented with Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

“Agosín … writes of [a life of exile] with beauty and grace, telling a compelling tale that both enchants and haunts.” —Jeanne Fredriksen on I Lived on Butterfly Hill (Booklist starred review).

Watch a video of Marjorie Agosín speaking at UMass Boston (2011):

We thank the following additional institutions for helping publicize this event: the Consulate General of Chile in New York; Columbia University; the Consulate General of Argentina in New York; Facing History and Ourselves; the Hispanic New York Project; Hunter College, CUNY; InterAmericas®; The International Literary Quarterly; McNally Jackson Books; New York University; The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church; The 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center; University of Houston; and Words Without Borders. This program will be held in English. Event Information: Jose Negroni | <a href="mailto:jnegroni@as-coa.org">jnegroni@as-coa.org</a> | 1-212-277-8353 Press Inquiries: Adriana La Rotta | <a href="mailto:alarotta@as-coa.org">alarotta@as-coa.org</a> | 1-212-277-8384 <hr /> Marjorie Agosín is a Chilean-American poet and scholar whose work focuses on social justice, feminism, and memory. Her publications include A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (1995), At the Threshold of Memory: New & Selected Poems (2003), Cartographies: Meditations on Travel (2004), The Light of Desire (2010; translated by Lori Marie Carlson), Stitching Resistance: Women, Creativity, and Fiber Arts (2014), and I Lived on Butterfly Hill (2014). She has received numerous honors and awards including a Jeanette Rankin Award in Human Rights, a United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights, the Gabriela Mistral Medal of Honor from the Chilean government, and the Dr. Fritz Redlich Global Mental Health and Human Rights Award. She is the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American studies and a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. Lori Marie Carlson, a former Director of Literature at the Americas Society, has published 17 books ranging from novels to poetry anthologies. Her best known work, Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Latino in the U.S. (1984) is now considered a classic. Her other publications include the novels The Sunday Tertulia (2001), The Flamboyant (2002), and A Stitch in Air (2013); and, as co-editor with Oscar Hijuelos, the Cuban poetry anthology Burnt Sugar. She has translated numerous works of literature, including Marjorie Agosín’s The Light of Desire (2010). Carlson is a consulting editor at Atheneum/Simon and Schuster and a lecturer in the Department of English at Duke University. Fran Colletti is the New England Regional Director for Facing History and Ourselves, an international non-profit whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote a more humane and informed citizenry. With Marjorie Agosín, she helped create Facing History's educators’ resource: Stitching Truth: Women's Protest Art in Pinochet's Chile.

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I Lived on Butterfly Hill, by Marjorie Agosín

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Overview