Sunday, 5:00 PM 19 November 2023
Reading with Jen Yanez-Alaniz
2018-2020 San Antonio Poet Laureate Octavio Quintanilla
2023 Texas State Poet Laureate ire’ne lara silva
About the authors:
Jen Yáñez-Alaniz (She/her) is a Chicana Mestiza activist, educator, and poet. She is a PhD Fellow in Culture, Literacy, and Language in the Department of Bilingual Bicultural Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Her focused studies center on Translanguaging Poetics as Third Space. As co- founder of Welcome: A Poetry Declaration, she brings awareness through equity-driven cultural conversations centered on language justice, the preservation of language, and language literacy. Her work, Matrilineal Poetics: Toward an Understanding of Corporeality and Identity is featured in Latinas in Hollywood Herstories. A Pushcart nominee, her latest and forthcoming publications are included in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, South Dakota Review, Rogue Agent Journal, Mom Egg Review, West Trestle Review, Cutthroat: Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century Anthology, Boundless Anthology, and more. She is currently at work on an extensive critical biography of Carmen Tafolla, and Jen’s chapbook, Surrogate Eater orders now open.
FMI: https://jenyanezalaniz.wordpress.com/
Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, Existere: A Journal of Art & Literature, and elsewhere. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published in Poetry Northwest, Gold Wake Live, Newfound, Chachalaca Review, Chair Poetry Evenings, Red Wedge, The Museum of Americana,About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, The Windward Review, Tapestry, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, & The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas.
He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and poetry editor for The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism & for Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature & Arts Magazine. Octavio teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. FMI: https://www.octavioquintanilla.com/about.html
ire’ne lara silva is the author of four poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, and FirstPoems, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. She and poet Dan Vera are also the co-editors of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, a collection of poetry and essays. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine and is working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body.
FMI: irenelarasilva.wordpress.com
Red Salmon Arts is a 501(c)3 grassroots cultural arts organization, with a thirty-year history of working with the indigenous neighborhoods of Austin. RSA is dedicated to the development of emerging writers and the promotion of Chicanx/@/Latinx/@/Native American literature, providing outlets and mechanisms for cultural exchange, and sharing in the retrieval of a people’s cultural heritage with a commitment to social justice.
