Casa Cultural de Las Americas (CCA) and the Department of Hispanic Studies  presented the International Literature Festival Houston 2017, which was held at the A.D. Bruce Religion Center at the University of Houston last month. This event featured the first national, university-level, poetry contest in English and Spanish which is called Poetic Bridges. This was an exceptional and unprecedented opportunity for attendees to see a group of writers who are some of the most renowned women poets from Latin America and Spain.

The poets who were a part of the event included Diana Bellessi (Argentina); Matilde Casazola (Bolivia); Andrea Cote Botero (Colombia); Ana Cecilia Blum (Ecuador); Siomara España (Ecuador); Jeannette Clariond (Mexico); Maria Cardenas (Nicaragua); Veronica Aranda (Spain); Deborah Mouton (United States); Ida Vitale (Uruguay); and Soledad Bravo (Venezuela).

The event was co-hosted with Casa Cultural de Las Américas, the #1 Bi-lingual Cultural organization in the country. The organization is comprised of world-renowned and prolific Hispanic literary poets, writers, authors and Noble Prize Winners.