Join us for our chat with Enzo Silon Surin on his books, When My Body Was A Clinched Fist and his forthcoming poetry collection, American Scapegoat.
Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, librettist, publisher and social advocate. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards for Poetry and the forthcoming collection, American Scapegoat (Black Lawrence Press, May 2023). He is co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022), and the recipient of a New England Poetry Club grant, a Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a PEN New England Discovery Award and a 2020 Denis Diderot Grant as an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France.
Being a product of two countries, Enzo Silon Surin has dedicated his life and career to affecting social change through creative and critical writing and gives voice to experiences that take place in what he calls “broken spaces”. Surin’s work has been featured in numerous publications including by the Poetry Foundation and in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets. Their librettos have been commissioned by the Boston Opera Collaborative and their 10-minute play “Last Train” was adapted as a short opera and debuted in 2023 as part of a series of Opera Bites.
Surin teaches creative writing and literature at Bunker Hill Community College and is also Founding Editor and Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder/Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, Inc., a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization.