Oakland, CA - Carlota Caulfield, Mills College professor of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, will discuss the Irish in Latin America as part of a keynote panel featured in the Crossroads Irish-American Festival. Caulfield is the author of Ticket to Ride, a collection of autobiographical essays, poems and interviews, in which she reflects on her Cuban-Irish-Catalan-Sephardic heritage.

The panel discussion is free and open to the public, and will take place from 2–4 pm on Saturday, March 10, 2007, in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Main Public Library. Caulfield will be joined by Juan Josè Delaney, author of Moira Sullivan and Treboles del Sur, John Carlos Perea, award-winning musician, and Edgardo Vega Yunque, author of Blood Fugues, and No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew it Cauze Bill Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again.

From March 8–17, 2007, during the week leading up to the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration, the Crossroads Festival intends to expand the cultural, historical and geographic understanding of what constitutes Irish America by highlighting the Irish experience in Latin America and the Caribbean. The event is co-produced by the New College of California Irish Studies Program and the San Francisco Public Library.

On Friday, March 9, Caulfield will be interviewed by Augusto Conde on KWMR radio in Point Reyes Station. The station can be picked up on 90.5 F.M north of Bolinas to Bodega Bay and parts of Santa Rosa. South of Bolinas, the station can be heard on 89.3 FM; the signal goes to the Sunset and Richmond district of San Francisco and Pacifica. The station can also be heard online at www.kwmr.org.

Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering innovative degree programs for undergraduate women, and graduate degree and certificate programs for women and men. Consistently recognized as one of the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Mills currently ranks among the top 20 most diverse liberal arts colleges. The New York Times recently selected Mills as one of three leading California colleges for students to consider.

In 2006, the Washington Monthly College Rankings named Mills a leading liberal arts college based on community service, research spending, quality of preparation for graduate education, and social mobility. In addition, The Princeton Review’s annual guide, the Best 361 Colleges (2007) included Mills for the second year in a row among top U.S. institutions offering students an outstanding undergraduate education.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California on 135 lush acres, Mills provides a dynamic liberal arts education fostering women’s leadership, social responsibility, and creativity.

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