Join us on Thursday, March 21st—World Poetry Day— at 7:00pm for a celebration with Madison's newest Poet Laureate, Steven Espada Dawson. Dawson will read alongside '20 – '24 Poet Laureate, Angie Trudell Vasquez, and poet Chessy Normile, author of Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party. The reading will be followed by a short Q&A and casual reception. This event is sponsored by Arts + Literature Laboratory and Madison Arts Commission.
Madison Poet Laureate Debut Gala
Steven Espada Dawson is the author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025). The son of a Mexican immigrant and originally from East Los Angeles, he is the recipient of a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship.
Dawson’s poems have appeared in many journals and have been anthologized in Best New Poets 2020 (University of Virginia Press, 2020); Best of the Net; The Pushcart Prize XLVII: Best of the Small Presses 2023 Edition; and Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction... Read More
Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez was the Madison Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024, and the first Latina to hold the position. She received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. In Light, Always Light, her third collection of poetry came out in 2019, and her fourth, My People Redux, was published in 2022 both from Finishing Line Press. She started the first Youth Poet Laureate in Wisconsin during her poet laureate term. Angie is also a Macondo Fellow, was a Ruth Lilly Fellow as an undergrad, and the former Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. She is actively seeking a home for her fifth collection of poetry, The Farewell Tour, and in the ninth year of rewilding her yard back to prairie. Her working theory is the land remembers.
Chessy Normile is the author of Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party, selected by Li-Young Lee for the 2020 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. She received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and was most recently the 2022-2023 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She edits a zine series called Girl Blood Info.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are normally open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.