Celebrate the launch of Layla Benitez-James’ God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode But He Had to Make Sure, winner of the third annual Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. The program will feature readings by Benitez-James and prize judge Major Jackson, followed by a conversation between the two moderated by Nathaniel Swanson of Raven Press.. Free and open to the public. This event is co-sponsored with Raven Press, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop.

Layla Benitez-James is an artist and translator living in Alicante, Spain. Her work has appeared in the Acentos Review, Anomaly, Guernica, Waxwing and elsewhere. Audio essays about translation by Layla can be found at Asymptote Journal Podcast. Layla currently works with the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid as its Director of Literary Outreach.

Major Jackson is the author of four collections of poetry. His publications, Holding Company and Hoops, were finalists for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn, was winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Award Circle.