Traveling the Inner and Outer World Through Literature and Poetry

Avenue 50 Studio, Inc. and PEN Center USA present 

Traveling the Inner and Outer World Through Literature and Poetry

with authors: 

Felicia Luna Lemus, Reyna Grande, and Stephanie Dale

This Sunday, July 1, 2012, 2-4 PM

Free to the Public

Avenue 50 Studio, Inc.
131 North Avenue 50
Highland Park, CA 90042

(Los Angeles, CA)--- Join authors Reyna Grande, Felicia Luna Lemus, and Stephanie Dale as they take you on a journey that speaks to the pain of the immigrant experience, the celebration of sexuality, the loss of love, and pilgrimages of the soul, mind, and body. Avenue 50 Studio and PEN Center USA will present Traveling the Inner and Outer World Through Literature and Poetry on Sunday, July 1, 2012, from 2-4 pm. This event is free to the public and will take place at Avenue 50 Studio (131 North Avenue 50, Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA). For more information, please call (323) 258-1435.

Reyna Grande is the author of three books. Her first novel, Across a Hundred Mountains (Atria 2006), received a 2010 Latino Books Into Movies Award, a 2007 American Book Award, and the 2006 El Premio Aztlán Literary Award. Her second novel, Dancing with Butterflies (Washington Square Press 2009) was also critically acclaimed and was the recipient of a 2010 International Latino Book Awards. Both novels have been read widely in schools across the country and have been very popular with book clubs. Across a Hundred Mountains and Dancing with Butterflies have been published in Norway, with upcoming publication in South Korea. The Distance Between Us, Grande’s memoir about her childhood in Mexico and her young adulthood in the United States, is scheduled to be published by Atria Books on August 28, 2012. Reyna was a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow In 2003.

Felicia Luna Lemus is the author of two novels: Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties and Like Son. Lemus's writing has also appeared in anthologies such as Lengua Fresca: Latinos Writing on the Edge and Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and other Quinceañera Stories, and in magazines including BOMB and Latina. This coming academic year, Lemus will teach Creative Writing at Pitzer College. She has also taught at Antioch University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, The New School, the UCLA Writers’ Program, and as a kindergarten teacher in urban Los Angeles. She has been a featured speaker at Stanford, Yale, Cornell and Harvard, and she has been a Fiction Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. 

In 2007, award-winning Australian journalist and author Stephanie Dale walked across Italy, through the Balkans and into the Middle East with her adult son, Ben. Ben was on a pilgrimage, a 7000 km epic journey from Canterbury to Jerusalem. Stephanie flew to Rome to join him for the middle leg of his journey, with the intention of walking with him to Istanbul. My Pilgrim's Heart is the story of that journey. Stephanie Dale has been awarded the Australian Journalist Association Prodi Award for best feature in 1990, the Sir Harry Budd Memorial Award in 1992, and a gold medal IPPY award for Hymn for the Wounded Man for best fiction in 2011. To learn more about Stephanie’s journey, visit: http://stephaniedale.net/.

PEN Center USA, a literary nonprofit based in Beverly Hills, has a membership of more than 600 professional writers. PEN Center USA strives to protect the rights of writers around the world, to stimulate interest in the written word, and to foster a vital literary community among the diverse writers living in the western United States. PEN Center USA has a long, successful history planning literary events in and around Los Angeles. For more information, please visit:www.penusa.org

Avenue 50 Studio, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts presentation organization grounded in Latin@ Chican@ culture. Avenue 50 Studio is a center for cultural activities with workshops in art, spoken word and other creative forms of expression. 

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Avenue 50 Studio is supported in part by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the California Community Foundation; the Department of Cultural Affairs; the California Council for the Humanities; and The James Irvine Foundation