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.