ARTS & CULTURE

Artist of the Year

Over the last 39 years, the Santa Cruz County Arts Commission has selected outstanding artists nominated by the public and has honored them through the Artist of the Year Award. The Artist of the Year award is presented for outstanding achievement in the discipline of performing, visual, and literary arts. Nominees must be a resident of Santa Cruz County and must have: a national or international reputation, contributed to the cultural enrichment of the local community, and created or presented work in Santa Cruz County.

Stephen Kessler
Santa Cruz County 2023 Artist of the Year

Learn about Stephen Kessler's history and work below.   You may view the recorded performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV6rgxRVYc8

Writer and translator Stephen Kessler has been named 2023 Artist of the Year by the Santa Cruz County Arts Commission. The Artist of the Year award is presented to local artists for outstanding achievement in the discipline of performing, visual, or literary arts who have also made a substantial contribution to the cultural enrichment of Santa Cruz County.

Join us for a Profile Performance on Saturday, May 20, 7-9 p.m. at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. Stephen will present some of his favorite poems and translations of recent years. Admission is FREE to the public; seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis the night of the event.  

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Kessler has distinguished himself over the last 50 years as one of his generation’s most versatile and prolific writers, author of a dozen volumes of original poetry, 16 books of literary translation, three collections of essays, and a novel, The Mental Traveler (Greenhouse Review Press, 2009).  He has edited numerous literary journals and community newspapers and is the editor and principal translator of The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges (Penguin Classics, 2010).  Locally in recent years he is best known as a wide-ranging and freethinking opinion columnist in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. During most of the 1970s and ’80s he was active as an organizer of and advocate for the Santa Cruz poetry community, putting on readings, writing reviews and essays in the local weeklies, and cohosting with Gary Young The Poetry Show and Bards After Dark on KUSP radio. He is known nationally and internationally as a translator of modern Spanish and Latin American poets including the Argentine master Borges, Nobel laureates Vicente Aleixandre and Pablo Neruda, the exiled Spaniard Luis Cernuda, and the Argentine expatriate Julio Cortázar.

Artist of the Year Nominations

Learn about the nomination process for Artist of the Year!

Nominee Criteria
Nominees must meet the criteria established by the Commission:
  • Must be nominated by a resident of Santa Cruz County
  • Artist must reside in Santa Cruz County
  • Artist must have a national or international reputation/standing
  • Artist must have contributed to the cultural enrichment of the local community
  • Artist must have created or presented work in Santa Cruz County
Nomination Process

Sponsorship

The Artist of the Year program is sponsored by the Santa Cruz County Arts Commission
and the County of Santa Cruz Department of Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services.

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