Char & Stave reading in Ardmore series run by Chris DeMento

More information to come.

Photo by Tammy Chan on Unsplash

I’ll be joining Heid Erdrich, Rick Barot, Jonathan Farmer, and Solmaz Sharif as one of the judges for the National Book Awards in Poetry. Our work will be complete and we will just be celebrating the amazing work that we had the honor of reading this year! My mother, Dr. Norma D. Thomas, will be accompanying me!

¿Y dónde está mi gente?: An Evening with Three Afro-Latina Poets

Tues. Oct. 17 th , 6-7:30 pm

20 Cooper Square

Co-sponsored by the Dept of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts and The Latinx

Project at NYU with support from Some Contemporary Poetries, NYU English Dept and

Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts

6:10 pm:

Welcome: T. Urayoan Noel, The NYU Latinx Project – 5 min.

Introductions: Solena Ornelas, Masters student, Dept of Art & Public Policy – 7 min.

Poets: Jasminne Mendez, Yesenia Montilla, Raina Leon: 15 min. each (order to be specified

after conferring with poets)

Dialogue moderator: Pato Hebert 15- 20 min. including questions from the floor

Followed by book signing and reception.

https://tisch.nyu.edu/art-public-policy/events/-y-donde-esta-mi-gente---an-evening-with-three-afro-latina-poets

With Jasminne Mendez and Yesenia Montilla, we are on the road again with the Tres Leches/Tres Golpes tour, this time offering a collective reading and writing prompts in the Bloom Writers community. 12:30-4pm EST.

Latinx Heritage Month Final Showcase that is scheduled for Friday, October 13th from 5 - 8pm in Kagin Ballroom Second Floor. 

Final Schedule

5-5:25 Twin Cities Latin Band 

5:30-5:40 LSU Co-Chairs Opening Remarks 

5:40-6 Alicia Severiano Folklorio Performance (Student Performance)

6:05-6:25 Dr. Gonzalo Guzman Speech (Macalester Professor Speaker)

6:25-6:35 INTERMISSION

6:40-7:00 Grupo de Danzas Colombianas  

7:05-7:25 Edwin Torres, Vice President of Public Affairs at NewPublica 

7:30-8 Raina Leon, Professor and Poet

*The 5 minute spaces are for set up and set down and/or MCS introduction for next performer*

Creative Writing Workshops and dynamic reading at Texas A&M College Station

(Play and Writing the Self)

Back to Elementary

The most incredibly brilliant divergent thinkers are not in boardrooms; they are in daycare, preschool, and lower elementary grades.  The rigors of schooling, researchers say, may free our minds in some ways while caging our imaginations.  It's time to go back to your elementary freedom.  In this workshop, we rediscover the generative magic of play through card games and physical activities (that can be adapted for accessibility).  Together we summon the wonder and innocence of childhood in order to see ourselves and our world as new.  We push aside the apologies that barb themselves within our throats.  We boldly face our shadow creature fears and find an invincibility even in the darkest memory.  We will draw our imagined heroes and those we love.  We will study the work of writers of color and queer writers have the dexterity to step back through time to reshape the world.  Ultimately, we will all come away with the foundations for transformational work by going back to elementary.  

Times in EST. Online Session

With the Blue Stoop

Photo by Tammy Chan on Unsplash

Reading in celebration of the book release of Remedies for Disappearing by Alexa Patrick with Haymarket Books.

Times are EST.

Photo by Katrin Hauf on Unsplash

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. PST

Rooms 347-348, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3

F118.

Dismissing the Boundaries of Latinx Poetry

(Kenning JP García, Daphne Maysonet, Raina J. León, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Victorio Reyes Asili)

The poets in this panel refuse to allow for a singular definition for Latinx poetry. Rather, these artists and antiartists see the domain of Latinx poetry as fluid, constantly open for re-definition. Such broadening of our understanding helps to demand space for the expanding dimensions of Latinx heritage, beyond borders and inclusive of Afro, Trans, queer, and feminist Latinx identities. Such boundary shattering poetry is manifested on the page in a wide range of styles, forms, and techniques.

Photo by Zhifei Zhou on Unsplash

Afro-Latina Book Tour with Jasminne Mendez and Yesenia Montilla. More information coming soon!

Photo by Matt Wang on Unsplash

Jasminne Mendez, Yesenia Montilla, and Raina J. León read together on the Tres Golpes Texas Tour at Kindred Stories Bookstore at 2304 Stuart St. Houston, TX

Reading at Basket Books in Houston with Jasminne Mendez, Yesenia Montilla, and Emily Perez to promote, The Long Devotion, which explores poetry on mothering. More information to come.

Jasminne Mendez, Yesenia Montilla, and Raina J. León read together on the Tres Golpes Texas Tour at Black Pearl Books, the only Black-owned bookstore in Austin, for Torch Literary Arts Wildfire series, 7112 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78757

World Café Live and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts will come together to collaboratively present a cross medium discussion about America’s history and identity through 4 musical performances. As the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts presents its Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976 exhibition (October 6, 2022 – April 2, 2023) highlighting some of the most acclaimed works of American art including new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color. World Café Live will commission 5 musicians and 3 poets reflective of those populations to come together to develop several evenings worth of performances that illuminate what constitutes American History and identity.

In this event, I’ll be joining a long tradition of Unity Days at Merrimack College while talking about Black feminist mothering in and out of the academy. This is a new talk for me that centers the knowledge, world shaping, and medicine that comes from the dream. In the talk, I also invoke the presence of my matrilineal ancestors and ask questions for us all to consider, such as when have you facilitated the rest of Black women? When a Black woman rests enough to dream, all the world trembles with a radical possibility!

10 am EST

World Café Live and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts will come together to collaboratively present a cross medium discussion about America’s history and identity through 4 musical performances. As the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts presents its Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976 exhibition (October 6, 2022 – April 2, 2023) highlighting some of the most acclaimed works of American art including new narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color. World Café Live will commission 5 musicians and 3 poets reflective of those populations to come together to develop several evenings worth of performances that illuminate what constitutes American History and identity.

Two Rivers Reading Series celebrates Philadelphia, the arts, and activism! Our city of love is rooted in revolution and transformation, founded at the nexus of waters! This series celebrates that, inviting writers, artists, and other creatives to share 3 minutes of new, daring, risky work. The circle is opened and closed in music, each month from a different musician, and each night also includes significant time devoted to learning about change-making work done in community by an organizer from Philly. It is a night of vulnerability and connection innovation. Though it spotlights Philly doing what we do, all are welcome to hear and connect and dream together.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86533628611?pwd=aU5oRnJjbkVuVXVTZytNSUsySmo4UT09

Meeting ID: 865 3362 8611
Passcode: 668565

Latinx Poetics (edited by Ruben Quesada) anthology celebration withJuan Morales, Tomás Morin, ire’ne lara silva, Sheryl Luna, Orlando Menes, Blas Falconer, Laurie Ann Guerrero, and others! The event will also be live-streamed via Zoom and recorded. Start time is 7pm CST.