Description:

Celebrate National Poetry Month and Library Week with a reading and discussion by local poet Mayda Del Valle from her new chapbook with Northwestern University Press, The University of Hip-Hop. At once a love letter to the city of Chicago and a meditation on movement and migration, Del Valle’s poems ask us what it means to leave home, how to take home with you, and how to build a new home elsewhere. Copies of the book will be available for sale, with a signing to follow. Refreshments will be served.

Mayda Del Valle is a native Chicagoan hailing from the South Side. An award-winning poet and performer, she appeared on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on HBO and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award–winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. Her first published collection, The University of Hip-Hop, is the winner of the 2017 Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize and is now available from Northwestern University Press.