"It Was Hard Not to Say Capitalism": A Creative Life in Contemporary Conditions with Daniel Borzutsky

Fri, October 9, 2026 3:00 PM - Fri, October 9, 2026 4:15 PM at RCAH Theater, Snyder-Phillips Hall, 362 Bogue St., East Lansing

The Creative Writing Program at MSU's Living Breathing Writing Series and the RCAH Center for Poetry are pleased to present National Book Award winner Daniel Borzutzky for a literary reading and discussion. 

 

Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and Spanish-language translator from Chicago. His most recent books are The Murmuring Grief of the Americas (2024), winner of the Chicago Review of Books Best Poetry Collection, and Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (2021). His 2016 collection, The Performance of Becoming Human, received the National Book Award. Lake Michigan (2018) was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His most recent translations are Elvira Hernandez’s Bodies Found in Various Places (2025, with Alec Schumacher); Cecilia Vicuña’s The Deer Book (2024); and Paula Ilabaca Nuñez’s The Loose Pearl (2022), winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto's Valdivia received the American Literary Translator’s Association’s 2017 National Translation Award, and he has also translated collections by Raúl Zurita, and Jaime Luis Huenún. He is a Distinguished Professor in English and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago.

 

The RCAH Theater is located on the terrace/basement level of Snyder-Phillips Hall. Click here for parking information.