Lee University’s Writers Festival will begin Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. with author and translator Jeremy Paden.
His reading will take place in the Rose Lecture Hall, located in Lee University’s Helen Devos College of Education on Parker Street.
 
“We are so glad that Jeremy Paden is coming to share with us his poems and translations,” said Dr. William Woolfitt, assistant professor of creative writing at Lee. “His writings about the 2010 Copiapó mining accident in Chile, the Dirty War in Argentina, and his childhood in Central America should be of interest to many students and community members.”
 
Paden was born in Milan, Italy, and raised in both Central America and the Caribbean. He is the author of several poetry collections including “Prison Recipes,” “Broken Tulips,” and “Ruina Montium.” Paden also authored a book of translations, “Delicate Matter.”
 
His poems and translations have appeared widely in journals and in the anthology “Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets,” which he also co-edited. He is a member of Affrilachian Poets and resides in Lexington, Kentucky.
 
"My language is the language of the Christian faith. My deep stories and narrative structures are those found in the Bible,” said Paden. “It informs and grounds my mythical thought and my ethics.”
 
Paden received his doctorate in Latin American literature at Emory University and is a professor of Spanish at Transylvania University. He is also on the faculty of Spalding University's low residency master of fine arts where he teaches literary translation.
 
While in Cleveland, Paden will also speak at Walker Valley High School and Cleveland High School.
 
This performance is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and Tennessee Arts Commission.
 
The writer’s festival will also host Amy Wright, a poet and creative nonfiction writer, on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020.
 
For more information on the Writer’s Festival, email Woolfitt at wwoolfitt@leeuniversity.edu.