STAR WITNESS

In Star Witness, Orlando Ferrand’s rite of passage, the poet lets his personal experiences serve as fuel to ruminate about issues directly related to the human condition. He tells his story with the hope that we may formulate our own questions and consider deeper truths. Does the soul have a gender? Is there a universal identity beyond our ethnic ancestry? Can knowledge become wisdom in our journey on Earth?

Through the retelling of some ancient tales, superstitions, Judeo-Christian legends and motifs, as well as biographical impersonations in the midst of devastation and hope, the poet contends with circumstances revolving around the highs and lows of love and loss, the violence often associated with lust, the alienation experienced by those in exile, and other acute existential crises, and wrestles at the same time with the possibility that we may be living in the twilight of human civilization.

Some of the poems in Star Witness were written while the poet traveled the cosmos to visit modern cities and the sites of ancient civilizations, and other poems in the volume were written within the partitions of New York City’s outer boroughs. This third full-length book of poetry by Orlando Ferrand is a tour de force.

Orlando Ferrand is a Cuban-American writer, poet, and visual artist. He was born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, and moved to New York City in his late teens. He was recently featured by TED, The New York Poetry Festival, and received the 2017 SU-CASA fellowship from the Bronx Council on the Arts and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, the 2015 Artist in Community Grant, the 2014 BRIO Award for Excellence in Poetry, and the 2011 Artist Summer Institute fellowship from LMCC. His memoir, Apologia: Cuban Childhood in My Backpack, received a 5-star rating by Readers' Favorite in 2012 and was selected as the Book-of-the-Semester by Hostos Community College, CUNY, in the spring of 2012. Ferrand's collection of poetry, Citywalker, won the Gold Medal in the Readers' Favorite Book Review and Award Contest in 2011. He also won the Linden Lane Press Poetry Prize in 2011 for his book La Otra Isla (Spanish Edition). Ferrand is a contributing writer and visual artist to PEN America Blog, Visual AIDS Blog, POZ Magazine Blog, Linden Lane Magazine, and The Adroit Journal. In addition, he writes for his own blogs, Dancing with Muses, and Pandora's Box is Open. He's contributed to the anthologies, La Pluma Y La Tinta New Voices, The Bronx Memoir Project I, and The Best of Panic. Ferrand has given poetry recitals at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Jacob Javits Convention Center, Alice Austen House, Pratt Institute Memorial Hall, and the Miller Theater. His prose has been showcased at the Sunday Salon, The Miss Manhattan Reading Series, and the Jasper Collective & Lost Lit "Visitations" Literary Reading. Ferrand's work as a visual artist has been showcased at The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Luhring Augustine, Jenkins & Co., and Cheim & Read in New York City. A graduate of City College, Parsons, and Columbia University, he also teaches visual arts and creative writing at numerous colleges and cultural institutions.

Dr. Robert F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of ESL and French at Eugenio María de Hostos Community College (CUNY) and former Associate Lecturer of ESL at Columbia University's American Language Program, has always insisted throughout his career as a teacher and writer that his role as an educator is to go beyond the confines of the subject matter itself in order to arrive at a more "concrete" goal, that of teaching people to have compassion for one another. Indeed, this desire to get us all to reflect on how to improve the human condition has been the driving force behind Dr. Cohen´s research and writing. Because of his reputation in his field, he has been invited to present at national and international conferences and has had articles published in professional journals. For many years, he was on the editorial board of Touchstone, the Hostos journal, and he has also edited works of fiction and non-fiction. In addition, with his co-author, Dr. Cohen has thus far written ten books: Longman Academic Reading Series. Reading Skills for College. Levels 3 and 4 (Pearson Education, 2014), four editions of North Star. Focus on Reading and Writing, Advanced (Pearson Education, 1998, 2004, 2009, 2015), and the High Beginner, Low Intermediate, and Intermediate editions of Reason to Write. Strategies for Success in Academic Writing (Oxford University Press, 2006, 2001, 2003, respectively). He and his co-author are also the Series Editors of an Advanced edition of Reason to Write (Oxford University Press, 2006). Worldwide recognition of Dr. Cohen´s ESL textbooks has afforded him the rewarding opportunity to consult at universities abroad. He has shared the position of consulting editor with a colleague on two multilevel textbook series. Beyond the Boundaries. English in an Academic Environment, Books 1- 6 (Sabanci University Press, 2003) and Journeys: Academic English for the Gulf. Books 1 - 3 (Zayed University Press, 2006) reflect their contributions to two wonderful projects, the first with the Foundations Development Program, at Sabanci University, in Istanbul, Turkey, and the second with the English Language Center, at Zayed University, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. As a result of their guidance, both institutions can now boast programs that are on the cutting edge of English language pedagogy. Dr. Cohen, who believes that through his publications he has become a more enlightened and creative contributor to his profession, taught at Columbia University for 12 years, from summer 1988 until summer 2000, and worked at Hostos Community College for 17 years, starting in fall 2000 and retiring in fall 2017. At Columbia University, he was the Freshman Composition Coordinator for ESL students for a two-year period. At Hostos Community College, he was Chair of the Department of Language and Cognition for seven years (2005-2012), the founder and director of the Hostos Success Academy for six years (2006-2012), and the founder and director of the Hostos Book-of-the-Semester Project for nine years (2006 -2015). Dr. Cohen received his academic degrees from Queens College (CUNY) in 1966 (B.A. magna cum laude in French, with election into Phi Beta Kappa), from Columbia University in 1968 (M.A. in French and Romance Philology), and from Harvard University in 1975 (Ph.D. in French). He remains to this day a teacher, writer, editor, translator, and an intercultural communications facilitator. For him, the creative life - honoring it and living it to the fullest - is where all his hopes and dreams are nurtured.