JULIA STEIN, LEE BOEK, and LYNNE BRONSTEIN

Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Fire Poetry

On March 25, 1911, a fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The owners had locked the doors. Within the hour 146 immigrant workers—mostly women--were dead. The Triangle fire galvanized a national social justice movement to protect workers’ health and to build unions. The poetry in this anthology have already won major American poetry prizes: Chris Llewellyn’s book on the Whitman Award for Poetry, Mary Fell’s won the National Poetry Series. These poems brilliantly capture this major turning point in 20th century American history. These poets recapture the lives of immigrant women and of women workers and inscribe  an American tragedy into literature. Over the last 100 years a huge literature of poems, dramas, and fiction has been written about the Triangle factory fire tragedy. This book is the first anthology ever of this important literature. This event features Julia Stein, editor/poet/anti-sweatshop activist; Lee Boek, writer, actor, activist, and artistic director of Public Works Improvisational Theatre project, and Lynne Bronstein, who has written four books of poetry--Astray From Normalcy, Roughage, Thirsty in the Ocean, and Border Crossing.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 18, 2011