FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Renowned author Sandra Cisneros to visit Heritage University

Toppenish, Wash. – Renowned author Sandra Cisneros will be a guest of Heritage University as she visits the Yakima Valley on April 16, 2019, and meets with students from Heritage and area high schools. Cisneros will give a reading and books signing from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Smith Family Hall located in the Arts and Sciences Center. Cisneros will also give a presentation at the Yakima Valley Museum from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. All events mentioned are open to the public.

Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her classic, coming-of-age novel, The House on Mango Street, has sold over six million copies and has been translated into over twenty languages. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, several honorary doctorates and national and international book awards, including Chicago’s Fifth Star Award, the PEN Center USA Literary Award, the Fairfax Prize, and the National Medal of the Arts awarded to her by President Obama in 2016. Most recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized among The Frederick Douglass 200, and won the PEN/Nabokov Award for international literature.

This won’t be Sandra Cisneros’s first appearance at Heritage; in 2009 she accepted an invitation by then-President Dr. Kathleen Ross snjm to visit the campus and speak to students. Both Cisneros and Sister Kathleen are MacArthur Foundation Fellows and began a friendship in the 90s which continues today.

For more information contact Melissa Hill, interim vice president for Student Affairs at (509) 865-8500 ext. 5807 or hill_m@heritage.edu.