Tres

Now a Californian, poet Gloria Vando Hickok prefers returning to Kansas City when the weather is warm. But the outdoor climate won’t matter when the poetry is as passionate as it will be at 7 tonight, when she joins members of the Latino Writers Collective at the Writers Place (3607 Pennsylvania, 816-753-1090) for Tercera Página. “That translates as the third page,” Hickok says. “It’s the third year we’ve gathered for this event.” Hickok co-founded the Writers Place in 1992 as a community center for the literary community and to create a forum for groups — including the Latino Writers Collective, created by Linda Rodriguez — to share their distinctive voices. Hickok, a proud Nuyorican — a New Yorker of Puerto Rican heritage — will read from her new work and a few older poems (“the crowd pleasers,” she says with a laugh) with fellow collective writers Carlos Duarte, Ignacio Carvajal, Miguel Morales and Sofiana Olivera, with music by Melek Ta’us.

Fri., March 27, 7 p.m., 2009