One of my projects this year has been organizing the tenth Biennial Conference of the Williams Carlos Williams Society at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez February 15–17 2024. The Biennial will focus on Williams’s Hispanic heritage, his indebtedness to the traditions of Puerto Rican, Peninsular and Colonial Spanish literatures, as well as issues of borders and translation in the broadest sense—linguistic, geographic, cultural—as well as Williams and the medical humanities, health, and culture.

Our keynote speakers will be Marta Aponte Alsina, author of La Muerte Feliz de William Carlos Williams, and Julio Marzan, author of The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams. The conference, free and open to the public, will include participation from local artists and writers, poetry readings in Spanish and English, as well as a tour of the city of Mayagüez—the birthplace of Williams’s mother, Raquel Héléna Rose Hoheb Williams, and the site of his uncle and namesake Carlos Hoheb’s medical practice.

I am grateful to the English and Humanities faculty at UPRM for their interest in Williams, and their many contributions to the planning process.