Legacy of Poetry Festival: Javier Zamora

Poetry reading and conversation with Javier Zamora.

Meet one of the most important younger poets emerging in the United States, Javier Zamora. Author of the 2017 poetry collection Unaccompanied and 2016 – 2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Zamora is also the recipient of a prestigious 2017 Lannan Fellowship. He earned his B.A. from University of California—Berkeley and his MFA in Creative Writing from NYU.

Born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. His father fled El Salvador when he was a year old; and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992).In 1999, Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually the Sonoran Desert. Before a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Javier managed to make it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants. His first full-length collection,Unaccompanied, explores how immigration and the civil war have impacted his family.

Cosponsored by Poetry Center San Jose