Join us April 21 at the Illini Union’s South Lounge for a book reading and signing featuring two soulful art-science creators, with special guests. Books available for purchase. Light refreshments served.
Richard Blanco’s Homeland of My Body is a collection of over 100 new and previously published poems selected by the author to represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define “home.” Blanco is a poet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer. Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The epistolary novel Two Revolutions: Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Physics by Smitha Vishveshwara and C.V. Vishveshwara is a series of reflections, transcripts, imagined vignettes, and letters written between two renowned physicists, a father in India, a daughter in Urbana, Illinois. The two cherish the opportunity to muse and ponder playfully together, while sharing a deep dive into each their areas of expertise. Smitha Vishveshwara is a physics professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a writer, a science-artist, an educator, and a mother. Through her scientific field of expertise in quantum condensed matter physics, she studies the coldest states of matter in the universe, emergent behavior, out-of-equilibrium dynamics, and more. In her research, she forges connections with quantum information science, biophysics, cosmology, and space explorations. This event celebrates National Poetry Month and the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), recognizing 100 years since the initial development of quantum mechanics. |
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