Chautauqua Writers’ Center Faculty Reading — Week Four — Featuring Maritri Garrett (Songwriting) and Maritza Rivera (Poetry)

Maritri Garrett is a remarkable independent artist whose music reflects the depth of her diverse musical background. As a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, her songs tell honest stories of life, love, and loss, offering healing and solace to all who listen.

Maritri holds a unique blend of academic achievements, including a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Fisk University, a Bachelor of Science in Composition, and a Master of Fine Arts in Jazz Studies from Howard University.

Her skillful versatility with instruments like the piano, guitar, bass, cello, and percussion sets her apart. Having performed with and opened for musical legends like Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle and sung back up for Barbra Streisand. She has written for theater, ballet, apps, and film.

Maritza Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet and US Army veteran who has lived in Rockville, MD since1994. Maritza has been writing poetry for over 50 years; she is the creator of a short form of poetry called Blackjack and is the author of: About You; A Mother’s War; Baker’s Dozen; 21 Blackjack Poems; and the Blackjack Poetry Playing Cards. Her work appears in the public arts project: Meet Me at the Triangle, in Wheaton, MD. Her work has been featured in literary and online publications such as: Gargoyle Magazine, Poet Lore, O Dark Thirty, Sojourners, WordWrights Magazine, MilSpeak.org, LA Bloga, ArLiJo, PoetryXHunger.com, and DanMurano.com. She has also appeared on: The Coffee House/MCTV, Joe’s Place/WHUR; On the Margin/WPFW, The Poet and the Poem/Library of Congress and Leguizamo Does America/NBC.

Maritza is the creator and host of the weekly Mariposa Poetry Series in College Park, MD, which ran from 1999 to 2002. In 2012, Maritza was a recipient of a Book in a Day (BID) International Writing Fellowship in Bahia, Brazil; in 2013, she attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Sicily; and in 2013 she was the recipient of a Montgomery County Executive’s Volunteer Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities.

In 2022, Maritza co-edited Diaspora Café: D.C., an Afro-LatinX anthology with Jeffrey Banks that was published by Day Eight. Maritza has been a supporter of The Memorial Day Writers Project, co-facilitated the Warrior Poetry Project at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD with Dr. Fred Foote and Richard Epstein, and served on the Board of Directors of Split this Rock in Washington, DC. She has also collaborated and worked on several literary translation projects with Yvette Neisser, Joseph Ross, Hiram Larew, Brenardo Taylor and Grace Cavalieri. Her translation efforts include Inquilinos Mudos/Silent Tenants by Alberto Roblest published by Day Eight in 2023. Maritza’s work also appears in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander and published in January 2024.