Thank you to the Donald Pitt Family Foundation and the ACT I Foundation for supporting the educational outreach component of this event.
Margarita Engle, Cuban-American poet and writer of books for young adults, takes us through a selection of her work, discussing her writing process, the origins of her writing style, her affinity for verse novels, the advantages of the form and experimentation, emphasizing her newest book, Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal (Harcourt, 2014). Engle’s novels-in-verse and her writing style are influenced by her bicultural background, childhood visits to Cuba, family ties, tropical nature, Cuban culture, and history. She is the author of The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom (Square Fish, 2010), which received the first Newbery Honor ever awarded to a Latino.
Margarita Engle
Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of The Surrender Tree, which received the first Newbery Honor ever awarded to a Latino. Her verse novels have also received two Pura Belpré Awards and two Honors, three Américas Awards, and the Jane Addams Peace Award, among others. Her most recent verse novel is Silver People, Voices From the Panama Canal, published by Harcourt in the U.S. and Canada, and by the University of Queensland in Australia and New Zealand.
Margarita lives in central California, where she enjoys hiding in the forest to help train wilderness search and rescue dogs.
