Author Ilan Stavans Shares Inmates' Insights into Hamlet

Celebrated literary critic Ilan Stavans will share his experience teaching Shakespeare in correctional facilities in a talk at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on November 2 at 7:00 pm. His talk, “Hamlet in Prison,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public.

Stavans will discuss his teaching of Hamlet in correctional facilities, and share insights his classes have made about the play and revenge, freedom, and redemption.

Stavans is an internationally known, award-winning cultural critic, linguist, translator, public speaker, editor, short-story writer, and TV host, whose best-selling work focuses on language, identity, politics, and history. Born in Mexico in 1961 into a Jewish family with roots in Eastern Europe, he was raised in a multilingual environment. He is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships, and other honors, including an Emmy nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Jewish Book Award, the Latino Hall of Fame Award, Chile’s Presidential Medal, and several grants. He is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His many books include Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language and Quixote: The Novel and the World.