Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her debut poetry collection, Grand Tour, was named one of the best books of 2023 by The New Yorker. A former Fulbright scholar, she has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, a Whiting Award, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the 2025 Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. A novel and nonfiction book are also forthcoming.
The Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival takes place in April each year and is the largest, open, student-run Poetry Festival in New York. Since 2003, we have been dedicated to the celebration of contemporary poetry and the creation of community around the art form. Previously, we have welcomed poets such as Terrance Hayes, Sharon Olds, Anne Carson, Kaveh Akbar, Tracy K. Smith, Donika Kelly, Claudia Rankine, Li-Young Lee, SLC’s very own Marie Howe, among many others. Our festival includes readings, panel discussions, generative sessions, craft talks, and more! We hope to see you there.
Free and open to the public, this year our festival will run from April 17 - 19th here on campus! For more information, please contact us at slcpoetryfest@gmail.com or follow us on Instagram (@slcpoetryfest). Register to attend.