Meet our Grantee-Partner: Lugar Comun
Lugar Comun builds bridges between cultures through art in Miami.
Lugar Comun reading of “No creo en la poesía” by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias featuring musician César Andrés. Photo courtesy of Lugar Comun.
Mission: Lugar Comun builds bridges between cultures through art in Miami. We create books and various multidisciplinary experiences for people of all ages, believing cultural exchange to be the most powerful tool for mutual recognition, social change, and expanding diversity.
Lugar Comun was founded in December 2012 as an independent bookstore in Caracas, Venezuela, and quickly became a cultural gathering space, hosting more than 1,500 free activities within five years. In 2018, Lugar Comun founders were forced to leave Venezuela. They settled in Miami Beach, Florida, and rekindled their work to create platforms of dialogue and understanding through literature in their new community by hosting poetry readings and providing workshops in Spanish on poetry, aesthetics, and publishing.
In 2020, Lugar Comun established Alliteration Publishing House as its publishing imprint. Alliteration publishes and promotes authors representing different languages, migration processes, and sensibilities, with a focus on literary engagement and cultural exchange among Spanish and English speakers. By providing authors with translation resources, Alliteration seeks to amplify unique perspectives to a broader readership and enrich the literary landscape.
Lugar Comun’s founders operate on the belief that poetry can preserve and disseminate cultural heritage, transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries, and serve as a universal medium for fostering dialogue and mutual understanding across borders. To this end, Alliteration’s catalog emphasizes poetry; 19 of its 26 published titles so far are poetry collections in bilingual editions. Alliteration is also in the process of developing a children's collection that will publish poetry and books by poets who have written for children.
Poet Rowena Hill at a reading in Miami. Photo courtesy of Lugar Comun.
In addition to publishing through Alliteration, Lugar Comun nurtures and celebrates emerging Spanish-language poets through the annual Lugar Comun Poetry Award, which aims to support and propel the careers of poets with fewer than two published books with a prize of $1,500. Alliteration translates and publishes the winning poet's work from Spanish into Italian and English, providing additional exposure for the winner and facilitating cross-cultural exchange and dialogue.
Receiving an Equity in Verse grant from the Poetry Foundation has enhanced Lugar Comun’s ability to sustain its mission. This has included hiring skilled translators, procuring resources for translation projects, and covering the costs of publishing new works in English. Additionally, the increased visibility from receiving the grant has helped Lugar Comun attract additional funding opportunities and cultivate partnerships with other literary institutions.
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