Judith Ortiz Cofer, to Speak at NSU- Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Judith Ortiz Cofer, an award-winning poet, essayist, and fiction writer, will visit the main campus of Nova Southeastern University. Cofer will read from her work and give a talk from 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium of the DeSantis Building. The event is free and open to the public.

Cofer’s visit is part of the annual Distinguished Speakers Series sponsored by NSU’s Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences. Her reading and talk are being offered in conjunction with a new interdisciplinary program devoted to the college-wide exploration of a single theme each academic year. This year’s theme is “Good and Evil,” which will be examined throughout the year in classroom discussions and assignments, in addition to special public events like Cofer’s visit. Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel is also scheduled to visit campus in February as part of the program.

Judith Ortiz Cofer is a native of Puerto Rico. Her novels include The Meaning of Consuelo (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 2003) and The Line of the Sun (University of Georgia Press, 1989). Her collections of poetry and essays include A Love Story Beginning in Spanish:  Poems (University of Georgia Press, 2005), Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer (University of Georgia Press, 2000), The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry (Norton, 1995), and Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood (University of Houston Press, 1990).

Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Glamour, and other journals and magazines. It has also been included in numerous textbooks and anthologies, including Best American Essays 1991, The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, and The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Cofer has won numerous awards, such as the Anisfield Wolf Book Award and a PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She received her M.A. in English from Florida Atlantic University. During 2001, she was Vanderbilt University’s Gertrude and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writer in Residence, and she is currently the Franklin Professor of English at the University of Georgia.

For directions to NSU, go to http://www.nova.edu/cwis/campusmaps/maincampus.html. For more information about the Distinguished Speakers Series, please call 954-262-8408.