Zhang Er and Leonard Schwartz Poetry Reading Sept. 24th, 2026

We hope you will join the Poetry Center for the first poetry reading and conversation of the school year. They are excited to welcome Zhang Er and Leonard Schwartz. 

September 24th at 12:30 PM - 3PM in the SFSU Poetry Center

1600 Holloway, San Francisco in the Humanities Building Room 512.

Zhang Er, poet, translator and opera librettist, born in Beijing, is the author of seven collections of poetry in Chinese, most recently Sea Volts and Bullets Twirl 《海跳起，子弹婉转》(2021). Her selected poems appeared in three English translation collections from Zephyr Press: First Mountain, So Translating Rivers and Cities, and Verses on Bird. She co-edited and participated in the translation of Another Kind of Nation: an Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Talisman House Publishers), and The Art of Women in Contemporary China: Both Sides Now, (Cambridge Scholars Publisher). She also wrote opera libretti in English for American composers including Moon in the Mirror (with music by Stephen Dembski, premiered Sept. 2015) and Fiery Jade: Cai Yan (with music by Gregory Youtz, premiered Nov. 2016). Tacoma Method, a new opera (with music by Gregory Youtz) is scheduled to premiere in March 2023 by Tacoma Opera. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest of US among trees with her husband and four cats.

Leonard Schwartz is a poet and writer and the author of numerous books of poetry, including, most recently, Flacofolio (with artist Heide Hatry), Actualities I: Transparent, to the Stone, Actualities II and III: Two Burned Hotels, and Actualities IV/V Comic Earth (2021, 2022, 2023, Goats & Compasses). Heavy Sublimation (Talisman House, 2018), If (Talisman House 2012) and Salamander: A Bestiary (Chax Press, 2017), with painter Simon Carr, are also out and about. His work in poetics The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises (University of Arkansas Press, 2016), is inclusive of poetry, essays, and interviews. Other titles include At Element (2011), which explore the idea of an eco-poetics, as well as The Library of Seven Readings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008). He edited and co-translated Benjamin Fondane’s Cine-Poems and Other, for New York Review Books. From 2003 to 2018 he produced and hosted the radio program Cross Cultural Poetics. Schwartz splits his time between New York City and the Pacific Northwest.