Tag Archives: Author Reading

Word Up Recirculation: Peggy Robles-Alvarado’s BURN ME BACK with Dr. Melissa Castillo-Garsow, Caridad De La Luz (La Bruja), and Massiel Alfonso

Friday, October 24, 2025 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
RECIRCULATION A project of Word Up
876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.)
New York, NY 10032

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Word Up welcomes author Peggy Robles-Alvarado for a celebration of her latest book, Burn Me Back, published by Four Way Books, with guest readers Dr. Melissa Castillo-Garsow, Caridad De La Luz (La Bruja), and Massiel Alfonso as they explore and interrogate Latina narrative and family lore that reimagines the future from the ashes of loss.

“Let us begin by declaring that Peggy Robles-Alvarado is a magic maker. Her poetry plows under your skin until you feel your soul brimming with epiphanies. In Burn Me Back, Robles-Alvarado invites us to party with the machinations of truth-telling, and no matter how much you try to avert its gaze, there is enough lyric, enough innovative turn of phrase, enough history, enough fire, enough celestial invocation, enough family lore to make you a believer in rebirth, in salvaging what is left in the aftermath of a lineage fractured by secrets. If you ever doubted poetry’s ability to make you whole, welcome to this sublime reckoning.”—Willie Perdomo, The Crazy Bunch

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“My Spanglish,” Peggy Robles-Alvarado declares, “drops the -s and makes it ma’ o meno’,” replaces accent marks with side-eye, “has a Tía sin papeles,” and recognizes that “there is no other way to say— / Cónchole papi, you look good!” Igniting across tongues, cultures, and countries, the incendiary poems in Burn Me Back harness the incantatory power of language through hybrid forms, preserving a beloved father’s memory, enshrining the legacy of the Latino immigrant community in Washington Heights and the Bronx, reimagining the world we share, and speaking toward a hopeful multiplicity of possible futures. At the cross section of Puerto Rican and Dominican diasporas, rooted in ancestral narratives and infused with generational dislocation, this speaker refuses to abandon what resists translation, makes the space she needs, and transforms objects as she names them: “My Spanglish knows a fire escape is also a terrace.” Yes, the language here is a feat of engineering — a design shaped by the conditions of emergency, an architecture of survival, deliverance to open air. Like isolating the notes in a thunderous chord, Robles-Alvarado dexterously teases out each word’s many meanings, listening for the individual strains that created her as she archives family lore and fleshes out her personal history, writing against patriarchy while codifying working-class wisdom. She reconstructs a whole genealogy in “What They Mean by Papers,” reciting a negative litany of “papeles.” “Not the Daily News or El Diario La Prensa, / or the kind my mother read to me on Sunday / mornings,” her “throat full of / pelitos de mango,” “Not the kind Tía Weltina used to roll her tobacco with,” “conjuring / Taíno spirits she exhaled … as she tried to memorize the national anthem,” but the kind “Uncle Rito forged” while he “learned to curl the R in his name / as if writing sacred geometry,” “the kind that convinced four of my aunts to marry older / naturalized men in exchange for an acre of my grandfather’s campo” — the kind that required the rest of their lives as payment, “their bodies, / all their milk and honey, all their amber and caña dulce / sacrificed to the lust of viejos verdes, old bastards / who soured early on too much tabaco y ron and wanted to plant / their moldy seeds in supple girls who had never seen snow.” Robles-Alvarado orchestrates the fullness of her song by refusing to leave anyone out, by making room for a term’s contradictory definitions and playing through discordant combinations until the dissonance resolves. What began as an elegy composed by a daughter lost in mourning becomes an expansive arrangement sounding rupture and repair. This music travels between loss and recovery, addiction and sobriety, the cooling embers of lost childhood and the heat of the present, this very moment in which you could reach out to the people around you and ask them to be here with you for every scalding second, the warmth of your skin against theirs posing a burning question — an invitation to burn you back.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Peggy Robles-Alvarado is a Jerome Hill Foundation Fellow in Literature, a three-time International Latino Book Award winner, and a BRIO award recipient. She has earned writing fellowships from CantoMundo, Desert Nights, The Frost Place, The Ashbery Home School, VONA, Candela Playwrights, Dramatic Question Theater, and NALAC. With two master’s degrees in education and an MFA in performance studies, Peggy’s work appears in The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, ¡Manteca!, great weather for MEDIA, and What Saves Us, as well as online in Poets.org, The Quarry at Split This Rock, The Common, Tribes.org, and NACLA.org. She has been featured at Solfest Latine Theater Festival, The Dodge Poetry Festival, Lincoln Center, HBO Habla Women, The Smithsonian Institute, PEN America, Harvard University, and AWP. Through her 501(c)(3), Robleswrites Productions Inc.,she created Lalibreta.online and The Abuela Stories Project. Learn more at robleswrites.com.

Dr. Melissa Castillo-Garsow is an Associate Professor of English at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY and the CUNY Graduate Center PhD program in English specializing in Latinx Literature and Culture. She is the author/ editor of seven volumes including the poetry collection Coatlicue Eats the Apple; the anthology, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets; the edited volume, La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades; and the edited volume Scholars in COVID Times. Her most recent scholarly book project, A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture (2020), examines the creative worlds and cultural productions of Mexican migrants in New York City. Her second book of poetry, Chingona Rules (2021), was a Gold Medal Winner of the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award, International Latino Book Awards (2022). She is a poetry editor for Women Studies Quarterly, and Arts & Literature editor for Latinx Pop Magazine. To learn more visit www.drmelissacastillogarsow.com

Caridad De La Luz (La Bruja) won an Emmy in 2022 and in the same year became the Executive Director of the NUYORICAN POETS CAFE where she began her career in 1996. Caridad has balanced her career of activism, education, spirituality and entertainment. She received the Puerto Rican Women Legacy Award, The Edgar Allan Poe Award from The Bronx Historical Society and was honored as A Bronx Living Legend. She was named “Top 20 Puerto Rican Women Everyone Should Know”.

Massiel Alfonso is a Dominican author, award-winning poet, and multidisciplinary artist who believes stories are medicine. Her debut, Handful of Poems, dives deep into human emotions with honesty and simplicity, earning First Place at the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards and Honorable Mention at the International Latino Book Awards. Through poetry, performance, and community workshops, Massiel creates art that challenges societal norms and makes space for conversations about beauty, identity, and change. Massiel focuses on documenting her existence through storytelling, as a reminder that we exist and our art deserves to exist too.

Word Up Recirculation: Book Launch: Ellen Hagan & David Flores’s TELL ME EVERY LIE with Renée Watson

Tuesday, June 24, 2025 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
RECIRCULATION A project of Word Up
876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.)
New York, NY 10032

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Word Up celebrates the launch of local authors Ellen Hagan and David Flores’s Tell Me Every Lie, a moving, layered young adult novel in two voices about finding truth in the lies we tell ourselves. There will be a reading, Q&A, and special guests to celebrate the launch. In conversation with Hagan & Flores will be Renée Watson, author of All the Blues in the Sky.

“A simmering romance in which two recent high school graduates at an elite resort endeavor to reinvent themselves by telling lies-and maybe fall in love. The protagonists remain sympathetic even amid their mutual deceit, while the cozy plot builds to a compassionate, mature, and surprising resolution.” —Publishers Weekly

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

ABOUT THE BOOK

John Paul Reyes wants to escape the worst truths in his life-other people’s pity since his dad died, and everyone else’s expectations about what he should do with his life now that he’s graduated high school. When he arrives at the Majestic Mountain resort with his Tita Abrigo’s wealthy family, he sees a way to escape-he can be JP Abrigo, rich and set, and he can lie his way to feeling fine.

Mia Malik is trapped in this town, working hard at the resort, trying to escape her broken family and to make her way to the prestigious art program she was accepted into. She’s desperate to afford her way there, and she’s sick of the privileged guests who have the whole world open to them, who don’t really even see her.

But then another staffer dares Mia to make one of the guests fall for her. If she can, she’ll collect enough money to get out. Mia knows this is dangerously against the rules, and doesn’t even want to pretend to like an entitled rich kid, but then she meets JP. Lying to him starts off easy, but then there’s more to him than she expected. And the way JP feels about Mia? So real. As their week together runs out, Mia and JP will have to dig themselves out from the lies they tell to see if there’s any truth in the feelings they have for each other.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. Her books include: Crowned, Hemisphere, Watch Us Rise (YA collaboration with Renée Watson), Blooming Fiascoes, Reckless, Glorious, Girl, Don’t Call Me a Hurricane, All That Shines and Tell Me Every Lie (YA collaboration with David Flores forthcoming from Bloomsbury, Spring 2025). Ellen’s poems and essays can be found in: So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth, Creative Nonfiction, Underwired Magazine, She Walks in Beauty, Small Batch, Southern Sin, ESPNW and Oprah Daily. She is the recipient of a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the 2013 NoMAA Creative Arts Grant and received grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts. National arts residencies include The Hopscotch House and Louisiana Arts Works. Ellen is Head of the Poetry & Theatre Departments at the DreamYard Project and directs their International Poetry Exchange Program (founded in partnership with Ambassador Caroline Kennedy) with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines. www.ellenhagan.com @ellenhagan

David Flores is a photographer, filmmaker, and educator. His images can be found on the covers of Poets & Writers, Scalawag, and PLUCK. His work has been showcased at The Kentucky Center, The Verbal Arts Centre of Northern Ireland, and film festivals across the country. In 2018, David began work on “Nueva Bronx: 21st Century Families” — bringing free family portraiture to Railroad Park in the Bronx. This project is his response to recent nationalist movements that have attempted to remove and erase familial representations of immigrants and people of color. David believes that family, in all of its beautiful forms, stands as a cornerstone of the human experience, creating intersections between past, present and future and simultaneously weaving larger connections in the community. David is a regular guest artist of the Digital Age Learning Institute, the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, and the Alice Hoffman Young Writer’s Retreat at Adelphi University. Recent arts residencies include ArtBuilt, Global Writes, Louisiana Arts Works, and the DreamYard Project. David lives in Manhattan with his partner and children.

Renée Watson is a #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her novel, Piecing Me Together, received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Her books include the Ryan Hart series, Some Places More Than Others, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, cowritten with Ilyasah Shabazz, Watch Us Rise, cowritten with Ellen Hagan, and Love Is a Revolution, as well as acclaimed picture books: Summer Is Here, Maya’s Song, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, written with Nikole Hannah-Jones, A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, and Harlem’s Little Blackbird, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Renée splits her time between Portland, Oregon and New York City.

Word Up Recirculation: Flare Fighters Fest Writing Workshop with Bridgett M. Davis

Thursday, May 29, 2025 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm
RECIRCULATION A project of Word Up
876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.)
New York, NY 10032

register

In recognition of Lupus Awareness Month, Flare Fighters Fest presents a book reading and writing workshop with author and filmmaker Bridgett M. Davis. Her newly released book, Love, Rita: An American Story of Sisterhood, Joy, Loss, and Legacy, is a tribute to her sister Rita, whose life was cut short by lupus when she was forty-four. Love, Rita chronicles Bridgett and Rita’s bond and sisterhood while exploring the persistent effects of racism in the lives of Black women. The author will read excerpts from her book and lead attendees in a reflective writing workshop.

Bridgett M. Davis (pronounced Brih-jet) is the author of the memoir, Love, Rita, published by Harper Books in spring 2025. Her first memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine, and featured as a clue on the quiz show Jeopardy! The upcoming film adaptation will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures. She is the author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow, named a Best Book of 2014 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and Shifting Through Neutral, shortlisted for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award. Davis is Professor Emerita in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she taught creative, narrative and film writing. Her essays have appeared most recently in The New York Times,  the LA Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia Journalism School, she lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Flare Fighters Fest (dba Flare Fighters) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization at the intersection of arts and creative expression, holistic wellness and movement, and community. Founded in 2024, Flare Fighters is proudly based in the heart of New York City, Harlem. Our signature event, Flare Fighters Fest, is held annually in New York City each fall, bringing together individuals, artists, and advocates for a weekend of education, movement, curated networking, and community-building—all while celebrating the healing power of the arts. Follow us @flarefightersfest for more information about Flare Fighters Fest 2025 and other upcoming events.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

Word Up at Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center – Book Launch: Cleyvis Natera’s THE GRAND PALOMA RESORT with Angie Cruz & Naima Coster

Monday, August 11, 2025 – 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Dominican Alliance Cultural Center
530 W 166th St
New York , NY 10032

Word Up and Dominican Writers Association celebrate the launch of Cleyvis Natera’s The Grand Paloma Resort , about a lush paradise in the Dominican Republic where guests enjoy incredible luxury, and the staff is always eager to please—that is, until they are pushed to the brink. Joining Natera in conversation will be authors Angie Cruz ( How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water ) and Naima Coster ( What’s Mine and Yours ). 

Word Up and the Dominican Writers Association are celebrating the launch of Grand Paloma Resort , by Cleyvis Natera , about a lush paradise in the Dominican Republic where guests enjoy incredible luxuries and the staff is always eager to please—but only until they’re pushed to their limits. Natera will be in conversation with authors Angie Cruz ( Cómo no ahogarse en un vaso de agua ) and Naima Coster ( What’s Mine and Yours ).

The event will take place at the Alianza Dominicana Cultural Center, 530 West 166th Street, New York, NY, USA . 

“With compelling characters and a narrative that steals your breath from the first page, The Grand Paloma Resort offers an unforgettable, unexpected story that will upend readers’ assumptions about power, pleasure, and moral salvation.”—Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming

“With captivating characters and a narrative that takes your breath away from the first page, Natera delivers an unforgettable and unexpected story that will upend readers’ assumptions about power, pleasure, and moral redemption.” —Xochitl Gonzalez, author of  Olga Dies Dreaming

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with a maximum of 100 attendees. Please register in advance .

ABOUT THE BOOK 

Laura is a local Dominican woman who, through sheer hard work, has risen through the ranks to become manager at the Grand Paloma Resort. Her idea to pair a “platinum” guest with their own resort employee to attend to their every whim has been wildly successful, and she’s just weeks away from a promotion that could blaze a path for her off the resort and toward a life of opportunity. If only her younger sister, Elena—who she’s looked after since the death of their mother—could get with the program.

Elena has tried to live up to her sister’s expectations, but to escape the drudgery of waiting on rich tourists, she’s becoming increasingly dependent on pills and partying. As a babysitter at the resort, she’s at the beck and calls of guests who are indulging their worst impulses and need someone else to watch their kids while they do so. Now, after an accident, a child left in her charge is believed dead, and Elena knows she’ll be held responsible.

When Elena runs into the child’s father at a nearby beachfront watering hole, he offers her an obscene amount of money for private time with two young local girls. Elena pockets the cash to fund her escape and prays she’s gotten the girls out of harm’s way. But then the girls are reported missing.

Set over the course of seven days, The Grand Paloma Resort offers an unforgettable story of class, family, and community, building to an intense climax in which the true costs of luxury are laid bare, redeemed only by true acts of love.

Laura is the manager of the Grand Paloma Resort. She’s a Dominican woman who has gotten to where she is through hard work. She’s just weeks away from receiving a promotion that will open the way to new opportunities. But her younger sister, Elena, whom she has cared for since their mother’s death, doesn’t seem to be cooperating.

Elena has done her best to live up to her sister’s expectations. However, to escape the monotony of serving wealthy tourists, she has become dependent on pills and partying. As a nanny at the resort, she is at the mercy of guests who give free rein to their worst impulses and need someone to care for their children in the meantime. After an accident, a girl in her care is believed to have died, and Elena knows she will be held responsible.

At a beachfront bar, Elena meets the girl’s father, who offers her an obscene sum of money so he can be alone with two local girls. Elena stashes the money to fund their escape, and although she prays nothing happens to them, the girls disappear.

Set over seven days, Grand Paloma Resort delivers an unforgettable story of class, family, and community, building to an intense climax in which the true costs of luxury are revealed, long-suppressed secrets and true acts of love are exposed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR About the author

Cleyvis Natera is the author of Neruda on the Park . She was born in the Dominican Republic, migrated to the United States at ten years old, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Her writing has won awards and fellowships from the International Latino Book Awards, PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshops, the Vermont Studio Center, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Rowland Writers Retreat, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is currently a Fulbright Specialist. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey. The Grand Paloma Resort is her second novel.

Cleyvis Natera  is the author of ” Neruda on the Park .” She was born in the Dominican Republic, immigrated to the United States at age ten, and grew up in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Her writing has received awards and fellowships from PEN America, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey.