Hilda Raz and Aaron Raz Linkto read at City Art
Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City UT 84111
Wednesday April 17th, 7:00—9:00 P.M.
Poet
Hilda Raz and Author Aaron Raz Link will read from their works on Wednesday April
17th at the Salt Lake City Public Library at 7:00 P.M. as part of the City Art
Reading Series.
Hilda Raz lives in Placitas, New
Mexico and is currently the Series Editor for Poetry at the University of New
Mexico Press. Prior to her recent move to New Mexico, she was the editor of the
literary journal Prairie Schooner from 1987 to 2010 and is the founding director
of the Prairie Schooner Book Prizes in poetry and short fiction published by
theUniversity of Nebraska Press.
In 1993 she was named the first Luschei Professor and Editor in the Department
of English at the University of Nebraska where she has worked intensively with
graduate students in the Ph.D. program.
She has published thirteen books as a poet, nonfiction
writer, and editor. Her current projects include a book of poems, List and Story and a nonfiction book
about transitions. Raz received the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for Excellence in
Literary Editing in 2010 and was a final judge for the National Poetry Series,
and the 2012 PRAIRIE SCHOONER Book Prize in Poetry and also the 2013 PS Book
Prize in Poetry. She is Poetry Editor for bosque
(the magazine) as well as a member of the Board of Directors of Arbor Farm
Press.
She is a past president of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and
has been a visiting writer at Stanford, The University of Tennessee, Harvard,
Goucher, Middlebury, The Pennsylvania State University, Antioch University-Los
Angeles, The University of Iowa, University of Florida, University of Alaska,
SUNY-Binghamton, University of Colorado, and many others, as well as at MFA
programs and writers’ conferences including Brockport, Bread Loaf, Writers at
Work, Taos, University of Nebraska and elsewhere.
Aaron Raz Link is a writer,
performer, teacher, and curator. He is the author of “What Becomes Me.” “Being
a man, like being a woman, is something you have to learn,” Aaron Raz Link
remarks. Few would know this better than the coauthor of What Becomes You, who began life as a girl named Sarah and
twenty-nine years later began life anew as a gay man. Turning from female to
male and from teaching scientist to theatre performer, Link documents the
extraordinary medical, social, legal, and personal process involved in a
complete identity change. Hilda Raz, a well-known feminist writer and teacher,
observes the process as both an “astonished” parent and as a professor who has
studied gender issues. All these perspectives come into play in this
collaborative memoir, which travels between women’s experience and men’s lives,
explores the art and science of changing sex, maps uncharted family values, and
journeys through a world transformed by surgery, hormones, love, and . . .
clown school. Combining personal experience and critical analysis, the book is
an unusual—and unusually fascinating—reflection on gender, sex, and the art of
living.
A Nebraska native, he
grew up to become an historian and philosopher of science, working as a
scientific educator with organizations including the University of Wisconsin
Zoological Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, the San
Diego Wild Animal Park, the Oregon Zoo, and the Oregon Museum of Science and
Industry. After the sex change, drag queens sent him to clown school, making
him a graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.
Most featured
readings are followed by an open reading. City Art is sponsored by the Utah
Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Catalyst, the Salt Lake City Public Library, Xmission, and the Zoo,
Arts, and Park Fund.
The event is free and open to the
public. City Art is sponsored by
the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Zoo, Arts, and Parks,
X-mission, and audience donations.
Joel Long
