The English Department welcomes poets Natalie Scenters-Zapico and Phillip B. Williams for a reading of their work. April is National Poetry Month, and in collaboration with Mass Poetry, Wellesley is encouraging all members of the community to celebrate the power of poetry to bring people together. This reading is one of several events taking place on campus. 

Natalie Scenters-Zapico is a fronteriza from the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, U.S.A., and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México. Her first collection The Verging Cities won the PENAmerican/Joyce Osterweil Award, GLCA's New Writers Award, NACCS Foco Book Prize, and Utah Book Award. Lima :: Limón, her second collection, is forthcoming in spring 2019. Her poems have appeared in a wide range of anthologies and literary magazines including Best American Poetry 2015, POETRY, Tin House, Kenyon Review, and more. She is currently a professor of literature at Bennington College and in Fall 2019 will be joining the faculty at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.

Phillip B. Williams is the author of Thief in the Interior, winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award, and finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature (Poetry) and a Thom Gunn Award from the Publishing Triangle. He received a 2017 Whiting Award, 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop fellowship. Phillip is the co-editor in chief of the online journal Vinyl. He currently teaches literature and creative writing at Bennington College.