¿Qué Pasa, Raza?

Manuel Ramos

Our Lady of the Lake
Guillermo Arriaga
Vicente Cabrera Funes
Anna in the Tropics
Call For Submissions


OUR LADY OF THE LAKE LITERARY FESTIVAL
From San Antonio comes this announcement:

"Sandra Cisneros, Robert Coover, John Phillip Santos and Demetria Martínez will headline Our Lady of the Lake University’s (OLLU) first city-wide literary festival. Scheduled for March 28 to April 2, Heart Without Borders/Corazón Sin Fronteras will bring nationally recognized authors to the Alamo City.

Cisneros will launch the festival with a special reading of her works with a book signing to follow. Martínez will also read from her newly-released Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (University of Oklahoma Press), a collection of essays that gives voice to a tongue-tied generation through the author’s deeply personal views on religion and culture. Santos, the first Latino Rhodes Scholar, will lead the Open Mic session as well as give readings throughout the festival.

All events are free unless otherwise noted. Click here for a complete list of events or call 210-434-6711, ext. 2091."

GUILLERMO ARRIAGA


Last Week I saw The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Excellent, written by Guillermo Arriaga, who also scripted 21 Grams and Amores Perros. I recommend the movie at all levels - the story is a brilliant commentary on friendship, racism, responsibility and salvation. And the acting and direction are outstanding. Tommy Lee Jones delivers his best performance in years, the rest of the cast is as good as it gets, on a par with the ensemble in Crash - Julio Cedillo, Barry Pepper, Dwight Yoakum, Levon Helm, Melissa Leo and January Jones. Arriaga is on an incredible role. He and director Alejandro González Iñárritu are finishing their planned trilogy of movies (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) that deal with mortality and death.

Arriaga also is a novelist and short story writer. His latest novel, The Night Buffalo (Atria), hits the streets in May. The publisher describes this book in this way: "Luminous writing characterizes this novel of love and friendship, passion and betrayal, lunacy and mental illness. The Night Buffalo is set in Mexico City, revolving around the mysterious suicide of Gregorio, a charismatic but troubled young man who was betrayed by the two people he trusted most. The beautifully rendered narrative is driven by what is concealed and what is revealed. The sum leads finally to the truth of how Gregorio ended up 'on his mother's lap, stretched out on the back seat of the car his father feverishly drove to the hospital' and the aftermath of his demise."

VICENTE CABRERA FUNES
The University of Minnesota, Morris News reports the following:

"University of Minnesota, Morris Professor of Spanish and Ecuadorian novelist Vicente Cabrera Funes will read from his fourth novel, Los malditos amantes de Carolina (Lebresa), at 2 p.m., April 3, at the University of Minnesota Bookstore, located in Coffman Memorial Union on the University's Minneapolis campus. Also reading from portions of the book that they translated into English will be Stacey Parker Aronson, Tom Turner and James Wojtaszek, all UMM Spanish faculty.

Los malditos amantes de Carolina is a series of chronicles kept by different characters in a book concerning a particularly fascinating and captivating woman. The chroniclers start out with Federico Solis Ampudio, but after much trouble and internal conflict, he passes the writings along to his intimate friend, Carmelo. But not even Carmelo can cope with the stories and, after he disappears, they are found and continued by Carmelo’s daughter, Eugenia. In the end the publisher is confused as to whether or not he should allow new additions to the already published chronicles, because so many people have meddled with them.

Cabrera will also present a reading in the Fargo-Moorhead area on April 22 and in October 2006 at the Chicano Latino Writer’s Festival, to be held at the public library in St. Paul. To find out more about Vicente Cabrera’s books, consult Cabrera. His books are available at the University of Minnesota Bookstore, the Resource Center of the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55406 and The Latin American Bookstore, 204 North Geneva St., Ithaca, N.Y. 14850."

ANNA IN THE TROPICS
By Nilo Cruz
Directed by Amy Gonzalez
Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Northern California Premiere
March 8 - April 2, 2006
Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto
The Theatre Works website says: "Passionate and shimmeringly poetic, this prize-winning drama ignites in the steamy heat of Tampa in the Prohibition era. There, Cuban-American factory workers still roll coronas by hand, and a dashing young storyteller is employed to entertain them with the entrancing readings of the classics. Soon he and his seductive stories are intertwined in the emotional lives of his listeners, inflaming loves, dreams, and jealousies once only imagined. For mature audiences."

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
I pass this on without knowing anything about this magazine or the person asking for submissions:

"Palabra Magazine A Magazine of Chicano/Latino Literary Art
Invites submissions of Short Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, and short plays, that bend rules, cross boundaries and explore new territory in Chicano & Latino literature, lenguaje y pensamiento....

Las Guidelines/Reglas: Fiction & creative non-fiction up to 3500 words, poems 3-5 with a max of 50 lines each, plays up to ten pages. Sorry, no genre work. Unpublished work only, including work published online in any manner.

Include: Name, address, phone number and email on each submission.

Simultaneous submissions oK. No multiple submissions. Response time 2-3 months. Snail mail submissions only. Include SASE for response only. Submissions accepted year-round. Manuscripts not accepted for publication wil be shredded and recycled.

PALABRA acquires first worldwide serial rights, nonexclusive electronic rights and nonexclusive anthology rights. Some pay. Copyright revert to author upon publication.

Mail submissions to:

PALABRA
P.O. Box 86146
Los Angeles, CA 90086-0146

For additional INFORMATION ONLY, email: palabralit@earthlink.net "

END NOTE
A reminder that Mario Acevedo reads from and signs his debut novel, Nymphos of Rocky Flats (Rayo) on March 23 at 7:30 P.M. at the Tattered Cover, Denver.

Later.