7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Resistencia Books, 2000 Thrasher Lane, Austin TX 78741

Join us on Wednesday, November 27th from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM to hear El Paso Authors Cassie Holguin-Pettinato and David Romo read from their recent books. Discussion and book signings to follow. Sit down with some cafecito and stay a while to browse books and connect!

Cassie Holguin-Pettinato is a Chicana poet, collage artist, and theremin musician from the El Paso/Juárez frontera. A fourth-generation resident of La Calavera, the last historic neighborhood of Smeltertown, she channels her rich cultural background into her work. Cassie is the author of The Lamb’s Tail (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and The Five Stages of Stuttering (Flowersong Press, 2024). She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. In 2024, she was honored with the Poet and Author Fellowship at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Currently, she serves as an academic writing tutor at El Paso Community College. Find out more about the author at https://www.cassiehp.com.

David Dorado Romo is an author, historian, and musician who specializes in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. He is the author of Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez, 1893-1923 (Cinco Puntos Press, 2005) and Borderlands and the Mexican American Story (Penguin Random House, 2024). Much of his global-microhistorical research has focused on South El Paso, where his family’s roots go back generations. His maternal grandparents moved to the border city during the Mexican Revolution and lived and worked in South El Paso. He recently came across documents showing that his ninth-generation great-grandfather crossed the Río Grande into what is now El Paso in 1647.

After graduating from Stanford University, where he received a degree in history, philosophy, and Judaic Studies, he started the Southside Education Center. There he taught chess, music and theater to youth in the Segundo Barrio. In 2006, he was one of the co-founders of Paso del Sur, a grassroots organization that opposes the City of El Paso’s gentrification plans for the Segundo Barrio and Duranguito.

In 2014, Romo received a Ph.D. in Borderlands History from the University of Texas at El Paso. His historical essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, and Mexico’s City’s Nexus.