Date: Tuesday, April 15
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: UNLV Student Union Ballroom
Details: Free and open to the public
Ana Castillo, a highly acclaimed author of fiction and poetry based on her Mexican-American heritage, will read in the Student Union Ballroom on the UNLV campus on April 15, at 7 p.m. Castillo is one of the leading voices of the Latina experience, and is the author of fourteen books, including "So Far From God," "Peel My Love Like An Onion," and her most recent novel, "The Guardians," which takes aim at the perilous lives and human experiences on all sides of the immigration and border issues so relevant now to American culture.
The event is part of the "Just Voices" project, an innovative community partnership that brings prize-winning authors of conscience into Clark County High Schools and to the UNLV campus during Social Justice Month (April). Books by Castillo, and other "Just Voices" authors, Gerda Weissmann Klein and Dan Chaon, have been approved by the Clark County School District and purchased by the sponsors so that more than 800 students can share in an innovative reading experience centered on themes of social justice. The readings culminate in classroom visits and meetings with the authors.
The "Just Voices" project also runs a class for teachers through UNLV's Department of English and the Southern Nevada Regional Development Program. The class provides Clark County high school teachers involved in "Just Voices" an opportunity for in-depth study of the writers' works, along with one-on-one time with the authors in preparation for in-class visits. The classes are in part also sponsored by the Dean's Office of the Lied Library at UNLV. Now in its third year of implementation as a community partnership in Las Vegas, "Just Voices" is fast becoming known as one of the most innovative writers-in-the-schools literary activism teaching projects in the nation.
"Just Voices" and the public readings at UNLV are sponsored by Nevada P.I.E., the Department of English at UNLV, Educational Outreach at UNLV, the Clark County School District, the Governor's Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust, and by generous donations from Fontainebleau Resorts and the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Family Foundation.
For more information, please contact the UNLV English Department at 895-3533.
