The Georgia Review will celebrate the launch of its Summer 2019 issue with an evening of poetry and music featuring poets Alberto Ríos and Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Athens-based musician Sarah Zúñiga. Open to the public free of charge, this event will take place at Ciné at 7:00 p.m. with a reception with light refreshments to follow. Avid Bookshop will be selling copies of the poets’ books and The Georgia Review will be available for purchase. ASL interpretation will be provided. 

Ríos, Arizona’s first poet laureate, is the author of thirteen books of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. The son of a Mexican father from Tapachula, Chiapas, and an English mother from Warrington, Lancashire, Ríos was raised on the American side of the city of Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border. Ríos’s honors include the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award, the Walt Whitman Award, and the Western States Book Award for Fiction, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work is regularly taught and translated, and has been adapted to dance and both classical and popular music. A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ríos resides in Chandler, Arizona.

Cahnmann-Taylor is a professor of TESOL and World Language Education at the University of Georgia. She is the winner of a 2015 Beckman Award for Professors Who Inspire; a 2013–14 Fulbright fellowship to Oaxaca, Mexico; several Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes; and a Leeway Poetry Grant. Her poetry collection, Imperfect Tense, was published in July 2016 by Whitepoint Press, and she has co-authored two books, Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre(2010) and Arts-Based Research in Education (2007). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Barrow Street, and Puerto Del Sol, among others.

An Ecuadorian and Nicaraguan singer-songwriter, Zúñiga has performed at Athens’ most esteemed music venues, including Hendershot’s Coffee Bar, the Georgia Theatre, the 40 Watt Club, and the main stage at Athfest, and at festivals and venues nationwide. Zúñiga studied acting and music in New York City, instructed by veteran professionals from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, the Metropolitan Opera, and Broadway. Her debut album is titled Someday Soon. 

The Georgia Review, an award-winning literary journal that publishes original poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews, as well as visual art, was founded at the University of Georgia in 1947. Visit www.thegeorgiareview.com or call 706-542-3481 for further information.