Photo credit: Bill Eichner

Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies, and other books such as How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent and Return to Sender joins us via videoconferencing as the keynote speaker for The Big Read.  The program will be held on Friday, May 10, 2013 at Columbia College Chicago’s Ferguson Lecture Hall, 600 S. Michigan Ave., 1st Floor from 6:00-7:30pm.  A reception follows the program.
 
Ms. Alvarez is a novelist, prize-winning poet, children’s author, essayist and currently a writer in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. Her latest work, A Wedding in Haitiwas published by Algonquin Books in 2012. The program will be moderated by Jesus Macarena-Avila, faculty member in the Humanities, History and Social Sciences Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Also on the program will be Grupo Marivilla, a Chicago area senior citizen Latina/o folk dance group who will be performing dances of the Domincan Republic in native dress. They are based at Centro Maravilla, part of Alivio Medical Center in the Pilsen neighborhood.  Members of the dance troupe are between the ages of 65-93.

The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.  This program is also made in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois General Assembly.