Rowland Hall is thrilled to host a poetry reading and discussion with Rio Cortez as part of our weeklong celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rio Cortez, born and raised in Salt Lake City, will be reading from her new poetry collection, Golden Ax. Golden Ax explores personal, political, and artistic frontiers, moving from Cortez's family’s history as “Afropioneers” in the American West to visionary glimpses of liberated futures. Her work examines what it means to be Black in Utah, what is at stake in linking our imaginations with blackness, and how to re-imagine the West when centering Black communities.  

Rio Cortez is an award-winning poet and children’s book writer. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The ABCs of Black History (Workman, 2020) and her debut poetry collection, Golden Ax, was longlisted for 2022 National Book Award. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA in the Creative Writing program at NYU. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Miami Rail, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT, she now lives and writes in Harlem, NY.

This event will take place in the Larimer Center on the Lincoln Campus (843 S Lincoln Street) starting at 7pm on Thursday, January 12th.