Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series: Elizabeth Acevedo & Claire Jimenez

Elizabeth Acevedo and Claire Jimenez are coming to Shelton Auditorium on Thursday, December 3, as part of the Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series. It's a double bill of two writers who have both spent the last few years picking up major awards for their work.

Acevedo is a poet and novelist who has built a huge presence in young people's literature. She was the 2022 Young People's Poet Laureate and won a National Book Award for The Poet X, which also took home the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She's also written With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and is a fellow of Cave Canem and Cantomundo. She lives in Washington, DC.

Jimenez works in fiction and won the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, and she also wrote the short story collection Staten Island Stories. In 2019, she co-founded the Puerto Rican Literature Project, a digital archive that holds hundreds of Puerto Rican writers. She's an Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina.

Both writers have deep ties to poetry and the written word—Acevedo coming from the slam world and Jimenez from fiction and literary archiving. The evening brings them together in the same room, and since it's part of the Visiting Writers Series, it's a chance to hear them talk about their work in person. The show is at 7:30 PM at Shelton Auditorium on the Butler University campus in the Midtown Arts District. It's free and open to the public, and no ticket is required.