Wed, Dec 06
|Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse
Margaret Randall - A Birthday Retrospective
Eight of Margaret's friends will celebrate her prolific literary life by reading from her works. V. B. Price, Greg Smith, Lauren Camp, Billie Parker, Zach Hively, Sylvia Dorado, Michelle Otero, and Yesi Llerenas Daniel.
Date, Time & Location
Dec 06, 2023, 6:00 PM MST
Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
About the Event
This will be an in-store event and will be live streamed to Zoom, register here for Zoom.
Margaret Randall has lived an extraordinary life as a renowned feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist. Born in New York City in 1936, her life's path has included living in Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua, with shorter stints in Peru and North Vietnam that profoundly influenced her. During the 1960s, she co-founded and co-edited the influential bilingual literary journal "EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN" in Mexico City and later taught at U.S. universities.
Margaret's early life was marked by interactions with New York's abstract expressionists, involvement with the Beats, engagement in the Mexican student movement of 1968, and living in Cuba and Nicaragua during pivotal moments in their histories.
She is the author of over 150 published books, with notable titles including her 2020 memoir, I Never Left Home, Cuban Women Now, Sandino's Daughters, My Life in 100 Objects, and Out of Violence Into Poetry.
In 1984 she faced deportation from the U.S. due to her writings being deemed "against the good order and happiness of the United States." After a five-year legal battle, she successfully reclaimed her citizenship.
Margaret has received multiple awards and honors throughout her life proving her enduring legacy as an unapologetic champion of her beliefs. These awards include the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett grant for writers victimized by political repression in 1990 and the PEN New Mexico's Dorothy Doyle Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing and Human Rights Activism in 2004. She is also recognized for her contributions to the literary and art world, with her photographs in the Capitol Arts Foundation permanent collection and various accolades from literary organizations and institutions.
Her four children—Gregory, Sarah, Ximena and Ana—have given her ten grandchildren and her first great grandchilden. She has lived with her life companion, the painter and teacher Barbara Byers, for thirty-three years, finally able to marry in 2013.