LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. - s4story -- People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos' well-loved annual Benefit "Notable Words" has returned to its roots with its upcoming event: "Notable Words/Palabras Notables: An Afternoon of Readings and Conversation with Melissa Coss Aquino Denice Frohman, and Luis Mora-Ballesteros, moderated by Nora Muniz,"  P&S/GyC Executive Director Rebecca FrancoMartin said recently.

This year's fundraiser, to be held on Sunday, March 17, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. in the Mackay Lounge on the campus of the Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ, features a conversation and Q&A with three exciting Latino authors with vibrant points of view, followed by an equally exciting dessert reception with the authors and moderator.

The Presenters
Melissa Coss Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer from the Bronx. She received her MFA from The City College of New York, CUNY, and her Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY in English. She currently works as an Associate Professor in the English department at Bronx Community College, CUNY, where she serves as the co-faculty advisor for Thesis, the Literary Journal of BCC. Her personal essay "Una Sinverguenza" (Shameless) was published in Callaloo, and her fairy tale "Pelo Bueno/Good Hair" was published in The Fairy Tale Review. Carmen and Grace (Harper Collins) is her first novel.

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Dr. Luis Mora-Ballesteros is a Venezuelan-American author and doctor in Literature who has developed his career as a writer alongside his work as a literary critic, promoter, and lecturer in Spanish. He is the author of the novels Díptico de la frontera (2020), La sombra del comandante (2021), and Ya no es posible el Sur (forthcoming), and the critical essays Prácticas críticas. Apuntes sobre literaturas urbanas del Caribe hispánico (2022), and City, dystopia and games of control in the Latin American novel at the beginning of the 21st century (forthcoming).

DENICE FROHMAN is a poet and performer from New York City. A Pew Fellow and Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, she's received support from CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, The Rumpus and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she's featured on hundreds of stages from The Apollo to The White House. Recently, she debuted her one-woman show, Esto No Tiene Nombre, centering the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders. She lives in Philadelphia.

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The Moderator
Nora Muñiz is a PhD student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. Her research Interests include Latin American contemporary literature written by women, studies of the body, feminism(s), ecocriticism, the Latin American literary ecosystem with an emphasis on independent bookstores and editorials.

Ticket prices start at $125.00 per person, including the conversation and dessert reception with the authors.   Tickets are available at this link and are tax-deductible as allowed https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=E358626&id=9

Sponsorship opportunities are available by emailing debra@peopleandstories.org or at this link https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=E358626&id=8

People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos (P&S/GyC) is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to opening doors to literature for new audiences for over 50 years. Through oral readings and rigorous discussions of enduring short stories, we invite participants to find fresh understandings of themselves, of others, and of the world - transforming lives through the "magic" of literature. www.peopleandstories.org