Acclaimed Brazilian Poet Salgado Maranhão and distinguished translator Alexis Levitin gave a bingual reading (English/Portuguese) from Maranhão’s work of poetry Sol Sanguíneo (Blood of the Sun). The event took place outside at sunset, under the trees in LACSI’s backyard garden, on Monday, December 3rd at 3:30pm. Salgado Maranhão is one of Brazil’s leading contemporary poets. His collected poems, The Color of the Word, won Brazil’s highest award, the Prémio de Poesia da Academia Brasileira de Letras, for the year 2011. An earlier collection, Mural of Winds, won the prestigious Prêmio Jabuti in 1999. In addition to eight books of poetry — including The Snake’s Fists, The Kiss of the Beast and the recent Tiger’s Fur — he has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians. Alexis Levitin has published 31 books of translations, including Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words (both from New Directions). He recently co-translated Tapestry of the Sun: An Anthology of Ecuadorian Poetry, and he is also the editor of Brazil: A Traveler’s Literary Companion. His most recent book is Salgado Maranhão’s Blood of the Sun. Levitin has been awarded two NEA translation fellowships and two Fulbright Lectureships, as well as residencies at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, the European Translators Collegium in Germany and the Rockefeller Foundation retreat at Bellagio, Italy. He is a SUNY Distinguished Professor at Plattsburgh State.