Mujeres de Maiz at NACCS
SESSION ONE – Thursday, April 25, 2024
Book Talk Part I: Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Epistemologies and Pedagogies
Time: 8:30am-9:50am
Location: TBA
Presenters:
Montes, Felicia “Fe”. California State University, Long Beach & Mujeres de Maiz. Mercado, Claudia. Mujeres de Maiz.
Gonzalez, Amber Rose. Fullerton College & Mujeres de Maiz.
Pennings, Megan. Mujeres de Maiz.
Chair: Zepeda, Nadia. California State University, Fullerton & Mujeres de Maiz.
SESSION TWO – Thursday, April 25, 2024
Book Talk Part II: Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: La Cultura Cura, Artivist Aesthetics
Time: 10am-11:20am
Location: TBA
Presenters:
Montes, Felicia “Fe”. California State University, Long Beach & Mujeres de Maiz.
Zepeda, Nadia. California State University, Fullerton & Mujeres de Maiz.
Martinez, Norell. San Diego City College.
Lopez, Michelle. Mujeres de Maiz & California State University, Long Beach.
Martinez, Maribel. Community Artist & Manager, County of Santa Clara.
Chinchilla, Maya. Independent Author & Educator.
Vertiz, Vickie. University of California, Santa Barbara.
Serrato, Claudia. Co-Founder, Across Our Kitchen Tables.
Vega, Christine. José State University.
Chair: Gonzalez, Amber Rose. Fullerton College & Mujeres de Maiz.
Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, this collection weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.
MdM’s political-ethical-spiritual commitments, cultural production, and everyday practices are informed by Indigenous and transnational feminist of color artistic, ceremonial, activist, and intellectual legacies. Contributors fuse stories of celebration, love, and spirit-work with an incisive critique of interlocking oppressions, both intimate and structural, encouraging movement toward “a world where many worlds fit.”
The multidisciplinary, intergenerational, and critical-creative nature of the project coupled with the unique subject matter makes the book a must-have for high school and college students, activist-scholars, artists, community organizers, and others invested in social justice and liberation.
New Orleans Poetry Festival
So excited to be visiting New Orleans for the first time with these powerful mujeres and to witness this beautiful convening of poets. If you are nearby I hope you can join us! It’s our second day and we’ve already eaten our way through our first full day and had the most fulfilling conversations on life and writing. Such a precious joy these days to get time together. Special thanks to Xochitl for planting the seed and for our donors for helping us to bring these beautiful people together. We could not have done it without you! There’s still time to donate to our go fund me and you will receive a special musical treat.
Starting Date/Time
Sat, 04/20/2024 – 4:00 pm
Location
Suite 204, New Orleans Healing Center, 2372 St Claude Ave
https://nolapoetry.com/node/260
Read more: New Orleans Poetry Festival Read more: New Orleans Poetry FestivalCentral American Myths, Mayhem and Magic
LBC I’m coming for you! Let me know if you’re coming I would love to see you! LONG BEACH CITY COLLEGE
LATINX HERITAGE MONTH
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
MAYA CHINCHILLA
QUEER WRITER, EDUCATOR, AND MEDIA MAKER
The ChaCha Files:
Central American Myths, Mayhem and Magic
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
2:00 – 3:30 P.M.
LIBERAL ARTS CAMPUS T-1200
Light refreshments and Snacks will be
provided following the event. #poetry #latinawriters #latinxheritagemonth #centralamericanart
Calling all secret journal writers, open mic junkies, eloquent status updaters, kitchen table chismosas, daydreamers and hopeful writers of all kinds. Come ready to write and trust the process. All levels welcome!
This workshop will be generative and encourage you to write and give space to a writing practice. We will center the marginal, the magical, the in-between dwellers, the border crossers and specifically center the voices of women, trans folks, queers and people of color. Allies, outliers and writers at the intersections are welcome to participate in the workshop while knowing that these are the voices that will take precedence.
Event link will be provided by email after RSVP.
REGISTRATION FORM $20 registration. Sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Artist Bio: Maya Chinchilla, author of “The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética,” is a writer, educator and media maker. She teaches as a lecturer in Latino/a/x Studies, creative writing, English and LGBTQ studies. Maya has been working on some pandemic projects including: hosting Live and Queer an interview based talk show produced by QCC, co-hosting three seasons of a women of color-centered sci-fi podcast; writing and producing the show “Central American Unicorns in Space;” studying Afro Puerto Rican Bomba and conducting writing coaching sessions for creatives and writers alike.
Birthday Month Wish: Subscribe to My New Patreon
Hi Friends and Fiends!
My goal for my birthday month is to sign up at least 10 new monthly supporters at $3, $5, 10, or $20 or more to encourage and help me make time for my creative process and to share more of what I know with the ones who really want to get into it and want to know more. Can you help me meet that goal? Subscribe, share, cheer me on and help me build with you.
I will be asking you what you want to see and sharing more with you in the coming weeks and months. It’s been a rough two years but art, family and community have been a lifeline. Much of my world has shifted, shrunk and at times even expanded among so much uncertainty, loss and grief.
Thank you so much for supporting my work, my creative process, my upcoming events and treats to share with only you! Click Here For MORE!
Central American Unicorns in Space!
Central American Unicorns in Space: A Queer Digital Odyssey
Coming to the National Queer Arts Festival
GET YOUR TICKETS HERE
JUNE 14, 2021
5:30pm PDT/ 8:30 EST
*Please note, this event will be streamed online. Once you purchase your ticket on EventBrite you will receive the streaming link via email.*
Connections to the past and to each other have been severed by dark forces that made us forget who we are and where we’ve come from. Set in the future where borders as we once knew them on Earth no longer exist, join our empathic adventurer/ storyteller Maya Chinchilla as she travels through the ether to unite a crew of healers, artists, shapeshifters and timekeepers using prayers, poetry, movement and performance to uncover what became of the Central American Diaspora.
Featuring:
Kimberlynn Acevedo AKA DJ Femme Papi
Jose Richard Aviles
Maya Chinchilla
Roy Guzmán
Lulu Matute
Celia Sagastume
and Señorito Chorizo
Concept and Script Navigation by Maya Chinchilla
Dramaturgy by Alison De La Cruz
Sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center
NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL 2021
“Since 1998, QCC has curated and produced 24 National Queer Arts Festivals (NQAF) that have featured more than 2,300 LGBTQ+ artists in over 920 different arts and cultural events. The festival has become a bay area cultural institution bringing to life hundreds of performances, visual arts exhibitions, literary readings and film screenings.
Our Creating Queer Community (CQC) program has commissioned over 400 LGBTQ+ artists to create, produce, commission, promote, and document original works examining LGBTQ+ social justice and civil rights issues that debut at the National Queer Arts Festival.”
THE FUTURE IS…
“This year’s theme, The Future is… allows us to collectively embody the future. This year’s festival honors QCC artists and our art as it is today, while also opening the door to imagination and manifestation of the future through the eyes of the artists centering Queer, Trans, gender nonconforming, Intersex, Two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, people of color (QTI2SBIPOC artists) and giving voice to the truth we know – the future is already here, an the future is us.
Over the years, our Creating Queer Community (CQC) program has commissioned over 400 LGBTQ+ artists to create, produce, comission, promote, and document original works examining LGBTQ+ social justice and civil rights issues that debut at the National Queer Arts Festival.”
-Natalia Vigil, Executive Director
2 x 2 A Gathering of U.S. Central American Poets
Join us for “2 x 2: A Gathering of US Central American Poets: Maya Chinchilla, Leticia Hernández-Linares, Jenise Miller, and Janel Pineda.”
They will read and discuss their work. Two by two refers to the multiple ways US Central American poets enter hemispheric conversations, often one by one, sometimes two by two, but always adding to the mix and amplifying our voices exponentially. Wednesday, April 21, 20215:00-7:00 PM EDT (2pm PDT)Register at: https://go.umd.edu/capoets
For more information contact: Ana Patricia Rodríguez, University of Maryland, College Park aprodrig at umd.edu
Maya Chinchilla, author of The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética, is a Guatemalan writer, educator and media maker. She teaches as a lecturer at UC Davis in Chicana/o Latino/a/x Studies, creative writing and LGBTQ studies. She is the editor of the forthcoming CentroMariconadas, an anthology of queer and trans Central American writing. Currently she is co-host of the Trek Table—a weekly sci-fi podcast holding “Star Trek Space” for women of color and their allies. Drawing on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the wounds we carry, Maya writes stories and performs poetry exploring themes of historical memory, family, tenderness, sexuality, and alternative futures.
Leticia Hernández-Linares is an award-winning, interdisciplinary, bilingual writer, artist, and racial justice educator. She is the author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl and Alejandria Fights Back/La lucha de Alejandría. Co-editor of The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, she has convened and collaborated with Central American artists and writers both nationally and internationally. Widely published, her work appears in Maestrapeace, San Francisco’s Monumental Feminist Mural and Other Musics: New Latina Poetry. Her bilingual poetry can be found in La Piscucha Magazine, Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry (Kalina Press) and Poeta Soy: poesía de mujeres salvadoreñas. Her work was also featured in the first convening of Central American women writers in El Salvador in 2019: Otro modo de ser. She has lived, taught, created, and protested in the Mission District of San Francisco for over two decades. A 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree, she teaches in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.
Jenise Miller is a Black Panamanian writer, poet, and urban planner based in Compton. Her writing and work about art, local history, and growing up Black Latinx in Los Angeles is featured in her chapbook, “The Blvd,” as well as in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, KCET Artbound, Boom California, and the Acentos Review, amongst others. On April 11, 2021, Miller was spotlighted in the Los Angeles Times article, “5 poets address complications of calling L.A. home: How will a reopening city treat them?”
Janel Pineda is a Los Angeles-born Salvadoran poet, educator, and the author of Lineage of Rain (Haymarket Books, 2021). A first-generation college graduate, she earned a BA in English from Dickinson College, where she was a Posse Scholar. Pineda has performed her poetry internationally in both English and Spanish, and been published in LitHub, PANK, The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S., among others. She is a part of the editorial team that founded La Piscucha Magazine, a multilingual arts, literature, and culture magazine created by Salvadoran writers. Since her involvement with the 2018 Radical Roots Delegation, Pineda is also a member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). She holds an MA in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London, as a Marshall Scholar.
Wandering Song Reading & Fundraiser Series
MAY 23, 2020 5pm VIA FACEBOOK LIVE
[UPDATE RECORDED VIDEO HERE]
Please join us for our second virtual event celebrating The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States edited by Leticia Hernandez Linares, Rubén Martínez & Hector Tobar. This is the first-ever anthology of the Central American diaspora to collect poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction by over 60 writers.
The book immediately sold out upon its release by Tia Chucha Press in 2017, but fear not! The press is working on a reprint that you can help make possible by sharing or donating to the GFM campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-wandering-song-reprint
FEATURED WRITERS:
A Honduran, LA-based poet and physician, FÉLIX AGUILAR Guatemala, and the US. His works appears in CQ, the Journal of the California State Poetry Society, and other publications. Félix has performed his poems at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York, among other venues. He works in community medicine.”
WILLIAM ARCHILA, author of The Art of Exile, 2010 International Latino Book Award, and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, 2013 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, has been published in American Poetry Review, AGNl, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Tin House, and the anthologies Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext.
IGNACIO CARVAJAL was born in Costa Rica. His bilingual collection Plegarias won first place in the contest Poetic Bridges by Casa Cultural de las Américas and the University of Houston. He’s a member of the Taller Literario don Chico in Costa Rica and the board of directors of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review. Ignacio is assistant professor at the University of Kansas.
CLAUDIA CASTRO LUNA is Washington State Poet Laureate (2018-2021). She served as Seattle’s Civic Poet, from 2015-2017 and is the author of Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press), shortlisted for WA State 2018 Book Award in poetry, and This City (Floating Bridge Press). Castro Luna is the recipient of many grants and fellowships, including an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, and a Hedgebrook and VONA alumna. Born in El Salvador she came to the United States in 1981.
MAYA CHINCHILLA, author of “The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética,” is a queer Guatemalan writer and educator. She gives readings, lectures, writing workshops and also teaches as a lecturer at UC Davis and elsewhere in Chicana/Latino/a/x Studies and creative writing. She is the editor of the forthcoming “CentroMariconadas” an anthology of queer and trans Central American writing (Kórima Press). Find her at Mayachinchilla.com
ROY GUZMÁN is the author of “Catrachos” (Graywolf 2020), the recipient of a 2019 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Raised in Miami, Guzmán lives in Minneapolis.
JANEL PINEDA is a Los Angeles-born poet and the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. She is an editor and translator for La Piscucha, a literary magazine created by Salvadoran writers. Janel has performed her poetry internationally, in both Spanish and English, and was most recently published in The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext. She is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths, the University of London as a Marshall Scholar.
SUYAPA PORTILLO migrated with her mother from Cópan, Honduras to Los Angeles, California in 1982. Suyapa is a historian and writes about gender, labor, and social movements. She is an Associate Professor of Chicano/a-Latino/a Transnational Studies at Pitzer College.
AWP 2020 San Antonio, Texas
Going for a week to one of my favorite cities in the world, SanAnto!
Here’s a list of some of the panels and readings you can find me at during the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference.
You can also find me hanging out at the book fair with Libro Mobile, Macondo, Women Who Submit, Letras Latinas, the Latinx Caucus and more. Hope to see you there!
March 4–7, 2020 San Antonio, TX
Henry B. González Convention Center
#AWP20 #SanAntonio
Queer Voices:
Nuestra Voz, Nuestro Cuerpo, Nuestro Tiempo—Our Voice, Our Bodies, Our Time
Friday, March 6, 7pm-10pm@Esperanza Peace & Justice Center 922 San Pedro Ave
Join us for an AWP20 off-site reading for evening of #QueerVoices from Everywhere!
Featured readers include:
Kay Ulanday Barrett, Edyka Chilome, Maya Chinchilla, Anel I. Flores,
Jo-Reyes Boitel, Six Gawd, Ire’ne Lara Silva, Gume Laurel III, Miguel M. Morales, Jesus I. Valles, Saul Hernandez, Roy G. Guzman, Pablo Miguel Martinez, Raquel Gutierrez, Carla Trujillo, Kate Carroll de Gutes, and Virginia Grise.
Writing Medicine:
The Role of Artists in Cultural & Community Healing
AWP Conference Roundtable Reading and Discussion (badge most likely required)
Saturday, March 7
12:10 pm- 1:25 pm
Room 213, Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
In November 2018, the FBI reported that hate crimes increased for the third consecutive year. Writers and artists build resilience and help communities heal, not only through our work on the page, but through our work in the world. Panelists offer reflections on their healing practices, from hosting pláticas following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, to working with Central American migrants at the border, to rewriting the centuries-old proclamation for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
w/ Michelle Otero, Valerie Martínez, Anel I. Flores,
Chasity Salvador, Maya Chinchilla
Indigenous/Xicanx/Latinx Writers Read-In & Mitote
#DIGNIDADLITERARIA
Saturday, March 7, 5pm-6pm
Courtyard, River Level Market Street entrance
Outside of the Convention Center
900 E. Market St. San Antonio, TX
Cost: Free
A call to action to all the Indigenous, Xicanx, Latinx, AfroLatinxs, Boricuas, Caribeños, Central/South Americans, los de las Américas, color de la tierra, the ohs, the ahs, and the exes, those trans to gender and/or genre, the rowdies and sucias, the falsas and for-reals, Todos, todas, todxs. YOU.
Share your stories with US at a free mass Read-In & Mitote.
Contact: Juan Tejeda
Organization: Organized by Alazan Arts Stories and Letters, a todo dar productions, Aztlan Libre Press, Books in the Barrio and Teatro
Currently Scheduling for 2020!
Let’s work together.
I can create a reading or workshop to your needs. I’ll post a list of topics I am working on for 2020 soon.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Maya Chinchilla, author of “The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética,” is a queer femme Guatemalan writer and cultural activist. She gives readings, lectures, writing workshops and is a lecturer at UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, Contra Costa College in Chicana/Latino/a/x Studies, creative writing and LGBTQ studies. She is the editor of the forthcoming “CentroMariconadas” inspired by Horacio Roque Ramirez, an anthology of queer and trans Central American writing. She is currently working on new writing and a forthcoming CentAm podcast, conducting writing workshops on Central American Feelings, and assisting and bearing witness on monthly humanitarian efforts in Tijuana. Maya writes and performs poetry that explores themes of historical memory, heartbreak, tenderness, sexuality, and alternative futures. Her work —sassy, witty, performative, and self-aware— draws on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the wounds we carry.
Chinchilla Like Tortilla 