A launch for The Rust of History will be held in New York on March 3 at Bureau, 178 Norfolk Street. The event starts at 7 p.m., doors at 6:30.

Present will be:

Raquel Salas Rivera (Mayagüez, 1985) is a Puerto Rican poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of six full-length poetry books, which have been longlisted and shortlisted for the National Book Award, the Pen America Open Book Award, and the CLMP Firecracker Award. His honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the New Voices Award from the Festival de la Palabra, the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, the inaugural Ambroggio Prize, the Laureate Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship to translate the poetry of his grandfather, Sotero Rivera Avilés. He has co-edited the anthology, Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), various folios, and the literary journal The Wanderer. This year he will participate in no existe mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria at the Whitney Museum of American Art, whose title borrows a verse from his fourth poetry book while they sleep (under the bed is another country) (Birds, LLC, 2019). He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and lives, teaches, and writes in Puerto Rico, where he also works as investigator and head of the translation team for El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña /The Puerto Rican Literature Project, a free, bilingual, user-friendly, and open access digital portal that anyone can use to learn about and teach Puerto Rican poetry.

Gabriel Carle (San Juan, 1993) completed a BA in Creative Writing from UPR-Río Piedras and an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from NYU. Their creative and academic research interests center on disaster poetics, queerness, race, gender, and migration in Caribbean literatures and cultures. In 2018, they published their first short story collection, Mala leche. They currently pursue doctoral studies at NYU Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Willie Perdomo is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix, The Crazy Bunch, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, and Where a Nickel Costs of Dime. Winner of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, the New York City Book Award, and a PEN Open Book Award, Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. He is co-editor of the anthology, Latínext, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, African Voices, and Best American Poetry 2019. He teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy and was appointed State Poet of New York, 2021–2023.

Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He is the co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón and the translator of Dinapiera Di Donato’s Collateral/Colaterales (Akashic Press/National Poetry Series). His first collection of poems is The Life Assignment (Four Way Books). A recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Queer|Arts|Mentorship and CantoMundo, he serves as the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center’s Co-Director, and along with Raquel Salas Rivera, Enrique Olivares Pesante and Claire Jimenez, is part of El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña.