Friday / October 4 / 7:30–8:30 p.m.
Williams Center for the Arts

Join us for the 2019 Latinx Heritage Month keynote event!

With her voice and guitar, Diana Alvarez creates an atmosphere where you can hear a “pin drop.” Alvarez’s music sets are bilingual and soulful, and her original songs exalt queer love, liberation, and fiercely sing out against oppression.

Dr. Alvarez is the singer-songwriter, poet, composer, and documentary filmmaker behind the multimedia performance, Quiero Volver: A Xicanx Ritual Opera, described by the press as “a visually and acoustically stunning performance meant to honor women, non-binary and genderqueer people of color.”

Alvarez’s music is fueled by her simultaneous work as an award-winning poet and documentary filmmaker. In addition to her poetry-script for Quiero Volver, Alvarez is the author of Consultations with Bruja Juana, a chapbook poetry collection published by Toadlily Press in 2009, and her poems also appear in The Best of Toadlily Press (2011).

Alvarez is Xicana from South Texas, and is the first in her family to graduate from college. She earned her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2008. In 2018, Diana earned her PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she studied with groundbreaking composer Pauline Oliveros. Dr. Alvarez’s dissertation research is titled, Bridge Artistx: Gatherings of Women, Non-Binary, and Genderqueer Artists of Color.

Diana Alvarez is the recipient of the 2008 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA) and the Malcolm S. Morse Graduate Research Enhancement Award in Honor of Pauline Oliveros from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY).

Free for all! No tickets required.

Presented by the Office of Intercultural Development.

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