Macondo writers' workshop fundraiser

founder Sandra Cisneros:
"The Macondo Foundation works with dedicated and compassionate writers who view their work and talents as part of a larger task of community-building and non-violent social change. We are poets, novelists, journalists, performance artists, and creative writers of all genres whose work is socially-engaged. What unites us is a commitment to serve our under-served communities through our writing."

Pajama Pachanga-Sandra Cisneros's 56th Birthday Party Fundraiser

Sunday, December 19th from 6 to 11 p.m.
At LUNA, 6740 San Pedro Avenue, San Antonio, Texas

ATTIRE: Pajamas

6:30 Krayolas

8:50 Mariachis/Conjunto Taller

9:40 Chayito and Teresa Champion and El Curro

10:00 Agosto Cuellar- Jive Refried

Featuring special guest performances by Janis DeLara and S.T. Shimi.

We request a minimum donation of $56 (Sandra’s age) per person if you plan to attend the party. Even if you can't come, please consider making a donation to help make our important work with writers possible. Because this is a small lounge venue, we aren’t selling the traditional table seating, but please don’t let that stop you from giving more. Seating will be limited and on a first-come-first-serve basis. The venue is intimate and the party is all night with different bands and people come and go during the evening. There will be a cash bar. Click here to make your donation: http://www.macondofoundation.org/home.html All donations are tax deductible.

For more information call Roland at 210-432-9098.

UTPA students to go on hunger strike in support of DREAM Act

HARLINGEN, Nov. 20 - University of Texas-Pan American students supporting the DREAM Act plan to go on a hunger strike beginning Monday until U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn declare support for the bill.

“While everybody else will be celebrating Thanksgiving we are going to join in solidarity for those who were not fortunate enough to have been born in the United States; for those who are trapped in a legal limbo right now and cannot enjoy the fullness of Thanksgiving,” said Jose Alexandro Garrido, UTPA Dreamer and member of the Coalition for Educational Opportunity Dream Act Project.

Students at the University of Texas at San Antonio have been in a hunger strike for over a week and more strikes are expected to spread across universities in Texas by students in support of the DREAM Act; a bill that if passed will grant conditional residency to undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States as minors, if they attend college or serve in the military.

The decision of UTPA students to go on hunger strike was announced Friday after Garrido and nine other students from UTPA, South Texas College and the University of Texas at Brownsville and Southmost College met in Harlingen to speak with the Rio Grande Valley district directors for Sens. Hutchison and Cornyn.

click link to read whole article on the Rio Grande Guardian website

Bilingual Interview w/ Lila Downs

thanks to Nancy G. for sending the link

Environmental Justice Poetry

Environmental Justice Poetry

Who: Dr. Kamala Platt

What: “Environmental Justice in Food Production Systems and Related Poetry”

When: 6:00pm

Where: Texas Lutheran University Schuech Fine Arts Center & Wupperman Theatre

Monday eve, September 13th, 2010

***************

Siempre Sustainable Network's Monthly Meeting will be held Monday, 8/13 beginning
with an advocacy letter writing campaign "on the patio" in front of the Schuech Fine Arts Center at 6:00pm (tea/cookies served and produce from community gardens available) followed by a special evening of poetry at 7:00pm in the Wupperman Theatre on the campus of TLU by Dr. Kamala Platt, university professor, poet, author. Her program is entitled: Environmental Justice in Food Production Systems & Related Poetry." Please join us.
………………………………

Dr. Kamala Platt received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University
of Texas, Austin in 1997. Her dissertation, "Women Write Environmental Justice:
the Literary Tradition in India and Greater Mexico" and a subsequent book
manuscript,"Environmental Justice Poetics: Cultural Representations of Environmental
Racism from Chicanas and South Asian Women" investigate the practice, theory,
and aesthetics of women generating cultural poetics that promote environmental
justice. "influenced by their socio-historical terrains." www.artco.org/sa/kamala/
index.html

Festival de Flor y Canto.

Festival de Flor y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, September 15 - 17, 2010
Friends Lecture Hall. Doheny Memorial Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

In 1973, USC hosted the Flor y Canto literary festival, a three-day event that featured dozens of emerging Mexican American poets and writers in the nascent Chicano movement... This year, which marks the centennial of the Mexican Revolution and the bicentennial of Mexican independence, the university will reprise the event, inviting prominent participants from the previous festival... to share the stage with a new generation of Chicano and Latino writers.

Schedule of Events

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

1:00 p.m. Welcome and introductions by John Carlos Rowe (USC Professor of English), Sy Abrego, Mary Ann Pacheco and Michael Sedano

1:30 p.m. Alejandro Murguía

1:45 p.m. Ernest Mares

2:00 p.m. Enrique Lamadrid

2:15 p.m. Estevan Arellano

2:30 p.m. Verónica Cunningham

2:45 p.m. Rolando Hinojosa

3:00 p.m. Ron Arias

3:15 p.m. Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin

3:30 p.m. Roberto Vargas

3:45 p.m. Dorinda Moreno

4:00 p.m. Frank Sifuentes

4:15 p.m.–5:00 p.m. Break for refreshments and book signings

5:00–6:15 p.m. Readings in Spanish, introduced by Gloria Arjona, USC Dept. of Spanish

5:15 p.m. Alurista

5:30 p.m. Marco A. Domínguez, Sr.

5:45 p.m. Juan A. Contreras

6:00 p.m. Juan Felipe Herrera

6:15 p.m. Jose Montoya

6:30 p.m. Richard Montoya and members of Culture Clash present One More Canto, a short documentary on a 1978 Flor y Canto festival

Thursday, September 16, 2010

1:00 p.m. Welcome and introductions

1:15 p.m. Conrad Romo

1:30 p.m. Daniel Acosta

1:45 p.m. Melinda Palacio

2:00 p.m. Amarilis Mari Martinez

2:15 p.m. Danny Romero

2:30 p.m. Gloria E. Alvarez

2:45 p.m. Estella Gonzalez

3:00 p.m. Manuel Ramos

3:15 p.m. Reyna Grande

3:30 p.m. Luis Rodriguez

3:45 p.m. Adelina Anthony

4:00–5:00 p.m. Break for refreshments and book signings

5:00–6:00 p.m. Readings in Spanish, introduced by Consuelo Sigüenza-Ortiz, USC Dept. of Spanish

5:15 p.m. Francisco Alarcón

5:30 p.m. Xánath Caraza-De-Holland

5:45 p.m. tatiana de la tierra

6:00 p.m. Olga Garcia

6:15 p.m. “Celebrando Chicana Poetry,” sponsored by Letras Latinas and introduced by Rob Casper, Poetry Society of America

6:30 p.m. Maria Melendez

6:45 p.m. Diana Garcia

7:00 p.m. Emmy Pérez

Friday, September 17, 2010

10:00 a.m. Welcome and introductions by William N. Vela (Director, El Centro Chicano) and Michael Sedano

10:15 a.m. Karen Cordova

10:30 a.m. Odilia Galvan Rodriguez

10:45 a.m. Ruben R. Mendoza

11:00 a.m. Mónica Teresa Ortiz

11:15 a.m. Sarah R. Garcia

11:30 a.m. John-Michael Rivera

11:45 a.m. Special presentation by Juan Felipe Herrera, honoring Cuca Aguirre with the UCR Tomás Rivera Lifetime Pioneer Award

12:00–1:30 p.m.: Lunch break

1:30–2:30 p.m. Student poetry section introduced by William N. Vela

2:30 p.m. Marco Domínguez, Jr.

2:45 p.m. Lisa Alvarez

3:00 p.m. Daniel Olivas

3:15 p.m. Daniel Cano

3:30 p.m. Rigoberto González

3:45 p.m.–4:45 p.m. Readings in Spanish, introduced by Gloria Arjona, USC Dept. of Spanish

4:00 p.m. reina alejandra prado (aka Santa Perversa)

4:15 p.m. Nancy Alcala

4:30 p.m. Javier Huerta

4:45 p.m. Rakel Delgado (aka La Pocha Catalana)

5:00 p.m. Exhibition reception for Sueños by the Sea: Celebrating Los Festivales de Flor y Canto at USC, ground floor of Doheny Library

Organized by Tyson Gaskill (USC Libraries), Barbara Robinson (USC Libraries) and María-Elena Martínez (History and American Studies and Ethnicity). Co-sponsored by El Centro Chicano and the Latino Student Assembly.

The above comes from this linked webpage... for further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

whistling duck on top of border wall

donna, tejas

a tribute to tato laviera by la bruja

El Mundo Zurdo: An International Conference on Anzaldúan Thought and Art and Performance

The Second International Conference on the Life and Work of Gloria Anzaldúa. Deadline for proposals June 1, 2010.Conference is November 5-7, 2010, UT San Antonio.

Tribute At NYU Honors Poet Tato Laviera

Tribute to Tato Laviera: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at NYU’s Kimmel Center from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

CantoMundo

Vision: CantoMundo cultivates a community of Latina/o poets.

Mission: Through workshops, symposia, and public readings, CantoMundo provides a space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latina/o poetry.

Description: The Inaugural CantoMundo Master Poetry Workshop is a three-day retreat that will develop, sustain, and support a diverse community of Latina/o poets.

This year, CantoMundo will convene July 8-11, 2010, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Master Poets Martín Espada and Demetria Martínez will each teach a three-hour craft workshop. These workshops will center on a particular element of poetic craft that is of interest to the instructor. All participating poets will attend both workshops.

In addition to the workshops, a guest lecture and a craft lecture will be presented. Applicants are free to submit a proposal for a craft lecture to cover a topic of their choice.

CantoMundo also will include a reading and book-signing that will be open to the public.

The three-day retreat will culminate in a visioning session where participants will discuss and plan the subsequent CantoMundo gathering. All participants will be asked to provide input and volunteer time to this collaborative and cooperative resource for Latina/o poets.

For more information, visit the CantoMundo website. Submission deadline is today, March 19th.

Benefit for Tato Laviera

Please consider donating to help Tato Laviera. (NY Times article on his current situation New York Times article on Tato Laviera.) Just last semester and several semesters before, he was a visiting writer at the university here en El Valle. He worked tirelessly with students and faculty in the Cosecha Voices program. Students from migrant farm working backgrounds wrote testimonios under Tato's and Dr. Stephanie Alvarez's direction and continue to perform their work all over the country. Tato was also a visiting writing in our mfa program and worked with me and our students to put on two Edinburgo Poets' Cafe performances. We all know Tato as a major poet, and I want to emphasize that he is also an incredible advocate for social justice, in New York, in his poetry, and beyond... especially here in la frontera -- a very real place that sounds abstract in the national and global news despite these times of very real and newly-erected border walls -- a place where Tato has motivated students to write about their lives and experiences and helped them break silences up on the stage. Please take a look at these two opportunities to donate to help him during this time. "It Takes a Village to Heal a Poet" poster and the campaign link below:

"Minnerican (Minnesota Puerto Rican) graphic artist Ricardo Levins Morales has created a poster to benefit Nuyorican poet Tato Laviera who is facing major health and housing challenges. The poster is available for $15.00 at www.rlmarts.com. Half the proceeds will go to Tato's support fund. They are also available for discounted bulk purchase to sell at events. Please forward this message widely. (Also click this link to The Point, to donate directly. None of the donations will be released unless we meet the goal)."