Event Calendar
WHM: Elisabet Velasquez, A Reading and Discussion
Presented by the Humanities Institute and Part of Women’s History Month
Date: Monday, March 3, 2025, from 10:00 to 11:15 a.m.
Location: Classroom Building, Room 100 – SUNY Westchester Valhalla
Elisabet Velasquez is a Boricua writer, mother of two children from Brooklyn, New York, now living in Jersey City, New Jersey. Velasquez uses poetry to share her own transformative narrative, illustrating how life’s diverse experiences—especially her experiences, growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn as a first generation Puerto-Rican teen mother and GED recipient have been instrumental in shaping her unique insights and approach to learning and writing. Her compelling story challenges traditional notions of success and emphasizes the profound value embedded in life’s journey. Her career began in 2009 at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe where she began sharing poems about her life and went on to join the 2009 Nuyorican Slam Team. In 2021 after 12 years of sharing her poems publicly she debuted her young adult novel in verse, When We Make It – an auto-fiction which gained wide recognition including: Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2021 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2021.
Classes are welcome!
This event is part of the WCC Humanities Institute’s series of lectures, films, and other presentations, which has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and several generous donors. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this event or this series do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, contact Professor Ostman at heather.ostman@sunywcc.edu.