NEWS

CHAPEL HILL – Latino poet and spoken-word performer Willie Perdomo, winner of the 2004 Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center, will be artist-in-residence April 12-14 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History is sponsoring the visit by the winner of two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships and author of four books.

Perdomo has been featured on PBS documentaries including "Words in Your Face" and "The United States of Poetry," and on HBO’s "Def Poetry Jam." His work has appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine.

PEN American Center, the largest of nearly 130 centers worldwide that compose International PEN, is a membership association of prominent literary writers and editors. Salman Rushdie serves as the organization’s president.

Stone Center director Dr. Joseph Jordan said the center invited Perdomo, of East Harlem, N.Y., because of his ability to reach a wide audience and his perspectives on Afro-Puerto Rican life.

"He is a very skilled performance poet, and he also is very much interested in continuing to publish in some of the more noted poetry publications," Jordan said. "We felt that his subject matter is very timely, and very much a reflection of what we see around us. It’s a very realist approach to art."

Perdomo will lead these events during his UNC visit, all free and open to the public:

· Discussion of his latest book and compact disc, "Smoking Lovely" (Rattapallax Press, 2003), 7 p.m. April 12 in Toy Lounge, Dey Hall. The discussion, in the Stone Center’s monthly Hekima Reading Circle, will include a brief reading and question-answer session by Perdomo. He also will sign copies of the book. The first 15 participants will receive a free copy.

· Reading of excerpts from "Smoking Lovely" and signing of copies at the Bull’s Head Bookshop, inside the UNC Student Store, starting at 3:30 p.m. April 13.

· Introduction of "Every Child Is Born A Poet: The Life and Works of Piri Thomas," a documentary film that charts Thomas’ troubled adolescence, imprisonment and rebirth as a poet-activist, starting at 7 p.m. in the film auditorium of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union.

Perdomo also wrote "Where a Nickel Costs a Dime: Poems" (Norton, 1996), the picture book "Visiting Langston" (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 2002) and "Postcards of El Barrio" (Isla Negro Press, 2002). His work has appeared in anthologies including "Poems of New York" (Knopf, 2002) and "Aloud: An Anthology of Writing from the Nuyorican Poets Café" (Holt, 1995). Perdomo performs regularly at the café, in New York City.

For more information on his visit, call Trevaughn Eubanks at (919) 962-9001.

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Contact: Trevaughn Eubanks, (919) 962-9001, tbrown3@email.unc.edu

News Services Contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu