Former U.S. Young People’s Poet Laureate Margarita Engle will deliver the keynote address at Fresno State’s 46th annual Young Writers’ Conference, an event that showcases the emerging creative works of high school students throughout Central California.
The event will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, May 6, at the Satellite Student Union on campus. The morning session — which includes an awards ceremony and keynote — is free and open to the public. In the afternoon, registered participants attend writing workshops led by English Department student volunteers.
Born in Los Angeles, Engle now lives in Clovis. She served as U.S. Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2017-19, and she has published more than 40 books, including award-winning novels in verse, memoirs in verse and poetry collections.
“It’s exciting to think that I’ll be speaking to future writers, and meeting young people whose books I might have the chance to read in a few years,” Engle said.
Among her most notable books:
- “Enchanted Air,” a verse memoir that received the Pura Belpré Award.
- “Drum Dream Girl” and “Dancing Hands,” both picture books.
- “Wild Dreamers,” the verse novel and Pura Belpré Honor Book that was long-listed for the National Book Award.
- “Wings in the Wild,” which received an International Latino Book Award Gold Medal.
- “The Surrender Tree,” which received a Newbery Honor.
As a Cuban American author, Engle said she has always had deep ties and connections to Cuba. Embedded deep into her heart, she said she carries Cuba with significance to a place of being her mother’s homeland and a place filled with childhood memories.
Engle writes about searching for hope in situations that seem hopeless to young people, and she tries to bring awareness to conflicts between the U.S. and Cuba. In her verse memoir, “Enchanted Air,” she shares memories of fear and sorrow during and after the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s.
Engle said she has spent her entire life waiting for a resolution between the two countries she considers home. Even to this day, she continues to “keep hoping for peace.”
A prolific author, especially in recent years, Engle’s next picture book is “Wifredo’s Jungle, the Power of Wifredo Lam’s Art.” Her next verse novel is “Evamar.” She is looking forward to sharing her advice about what compels her to write with the 400-plus young writers coming to campus for the conference.
“First, poetry takes as long as it takes,” she said. “I write every day, at whatever pace the poem chooses to emerge. Second, I’m getting older. It’s now or never.”
Listening to each other’s work and building a community is what Engle believes will help young writers achieve their goals.
Engle said she wishes she would’ve had a writing mentor when she first started. It was not until graduate school that she took a seminar course with the great Mexican American author Tomás Rivera in which she found the guidance she was looking for.
“[Rivera] taught me to write from the heart without worrying about whether my work would ever be published,” she said. “That has helped me so much.”
Young writers who attend the conference will experience a writing workshop on a college campus, taught by experienced graduate Master of Fine Arts students and undergraduate English majors. These generative workshops are aimed at teaching young writers to define and hone their craft.
They also have an opportunity to see their creative works published in the conference’s journal, Spectrum, which is edited by students in the English 166 Literary Editing and Publishing class. Many of those published also receive writing awards that include cash prizes.
This year, the English Department expects more than 400 participants from more than two-dozen area schools.
(Story by Destynie Molina; Jefferson Beavers contributed to this report.)
