Known for her work as a poet of witness, Carolyn Forché combines the personal and the political to create poems that are powerful sites of resistance. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Blue Hour (2003) and The Angel of History (1994), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award.

Her translations of exiled poet Claribel Alegría led Forché to El Salvador to work as a human rights advocate. The Country Between Us (1982), based on these experiences, won awards from The Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets. She has also edited Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poets of Witness (1993), a collection of work from poets who have experienced war first hand.

In 1998, the Edita and Ira Morris Foundation for Peace and Culture honored Forché for her work on behalf of human rights. She lives in Maryland and teaches at Skidmore College.

Join Literary Arts and Northwest Writing Institute for a discussion of Carolyn Forché’s work on March 19, 2007, led by local poet Judith Barrington.