Description:

The Litowitz MFA+MA Program and the Bienen School of Music are proud to present Sandra Cisneros, in conversation with Derek Bermel.

The program will include a reading, a discussion with Derek Bermel, and a performance of a piece from the work-in-progress opera “The House on Mango Street.” A book signing will follow; books will be available for purchase at the event.

SOLD OUTAdmission is free, but tickets are required. To reserve tickets, visit this link. Tickets can also be obtained at the event, while supplies last.

A livestream of the event will be available at: https://www.music.northwestern.edu/live/20241022

Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN/Nabokov Award for International Literature, the National Medal of Arts, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation. Her novel The House on Mango Street has sold over seven million copies, has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. In 2024, The House on Mango Street was published in the Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics Series in recognition of the 40th anniversary of its original publication. A new collection of poetry, Woman Without Shame, Cisneros’s first in 28 years, was published in 2022 by Knopf and also by Vintage Español in a Spanish language translation, Mujer sin vergüenza, by Liliana Valenzuela. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico. As a single woman, she chose to have books instead of children. She earns her living by her pen.

Composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel has received the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Recordings of his music have received three Grammy nominations: Intonations (Naxos, 2023), Migrations (Naxos, 2020) and Voices (BMOP, 2010). Bermel’s orchestral commissions have included works for the Pittsburgh, National, Boston, Saint Louis, New Jersey, and Pacific Symphonies, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and his work has been performed by major orchestras and ensembles in concert halls from São Paulo to London to Beijing. His chamber music has been commissioned by Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, eighth blackbird, the Guarneri String Quartet, Music from China, Copland House, Asko/Schönberg (Netherlands), Jazz Xchange (U.K.), La Jolla Music Society, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Figura (Denmark), and the Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations.