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| Melinda Palacio, Aurora Anaya Cerda, and Nora Comstock at the 14th International Latino Book Awards |
La Bloga will be reporting
from La Casa Azul Bookstore in Nueva York all week. I'll be in town for all the
events, including the Brooklyn Book Festival Saturday, September 23 and a book
signing at the booth hosted by La Casa Azul Bookstore and Las Comadres, Booth #
122. Confirmed authors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, John Parra, Reyna
Grande, Sandra Guzman, Toni Plummer, Melinda Palacio, Alberto Ferreras, Ana
Arelys Cruz Cabrera, Carlos Andres Gomez, David Unger, Grece Flores Hughes, Jaime
Manrique, Lucrecia Guerrero, and Patricia Engel.
My first visit to New York
as an author brought a special surprise, a win of the Mariposa Award for Best
First Book for my novel, Ocotillo Dreams. I had such a grand time seeing the
sights and mingling with New Yorkers that, after the June ceremony at the
Instituto Cervantes, I kept saying,
'I wish I can come back to New York soon'. Immediately, my wish was
granted when Adriana Dominguez invited me to join the Las Comadres booth at the
Brooklyn Book Festival and the Las Comadres y Compadres Writers Conference,
Saturday October 6,held at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, Brooklyn.
The conference features
authors, agents, editors, and publishers, but there will also be a poetry
panel, moderated by Rich Villar, Executive Director of Acentos, from 11:00
-11-50. Published poets discuss the poetry business and how to see your poems
in print. Panelists include Melinda Palacio, Emanuel Xavier, and Lila Zemborain. Register for the conference here.
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| Melinda and Toni Margarita (find us at the Brooklyn Book Festival Saturday, Sept. 23 at noon, booth 122) |
For those of you playing the
Where in the World is Melinda postcard contest on facebook, a big hint, I will
be in New York this week and for two days in October. See if you're the first
to identify where I'm at and I will write a postcard to you and drop it in the
US mail.
The New York festivities
begin tonight at La Casa Azul:
Book Launch Party for
Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods
and Fierce Friendships
Thursday September 20, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Edited by Adriana V. López,
this collection of stories features twelve prominent Latino authors who reveal
how friendships have helped them to overcome difficult moments in their lives.
Confirmed authors:
Esmeralda Santiago, Daisy
Martínez, Sofia Quintero, Michelle Herrera Mulligan and Adriana V. López.
Free event, RSVP required: rsvp.lacasaazul@gmail.com
50 for Freedom (This event is also
happening nationwide, including Tia Chucha's in Sylmar from 5pm to 10 pm)
Friday September 21, 6:00pm -
8:00pm
New York City's Latino
literary community will converge to participate in "50 for Freedom of
Speech," a national day of action protesting the de facto banning of
Latino literature in the state of Arizona (with similar legislation poised to
pass in other states as a result).
Reading by banned Puerto Rican author and
award-winning poet Martín Espada and readings of other banned book texts by
some of New York City's top Latino academic, literary and spoken word talent.
Organized by:
Librotraficante, Sangre Viva Arts Alliance and Acentos, Latino Rebels and La
Casa Azul Bookstore, 143 E. 103rd street, New York, New York.
Free event, RSVP required: rsvp.lacasaazul@gmail.com
Storytelling & Book Signing by
John Parra, Saturday September 22, 12:00pm - 1:00pm.
He may be a New Yorker now,
but Parra is from Santa Barbara and Goleta, a fellow California native. He is a
wonderful artist and I own my personal copy of My Name Is Gabriela. I'm looking
forward to meeting the artist behind children's titles including: Gracias/Thanks,
Waiting for the Biblioburro, P is for Piñata, and My Name is Gabriela.
Reading of The Distance Between
Us
by Reyna Grande
Tuesday September 25 6:00pm -
7:30pm
You've read all about her on
La Bloga, the L.A. Times, Slate, Christian Science Monitor, you name it. New
yorkers can enjoy hearing Reyna Grande's story at La Casa Azul.
Free event, RSVP required: rsvp.lacasaazul@gmail.com
Reading with Sergio Troncoso &
Renato Rosaldo
Thursday September 27, 6:00 -
8:00pm
Sergio Troncoso debates and
challenges us on the mystery of familias, how they determine our identity and
how we break free of them, from fatherhood to interfaith marriage to educating
our children. From Tucson to the Philippines, from Palo Alto to Manhattan,
these readable poems tell of illness and racism, love and death-all in vivid
tones. Savor these poems, slowly, what you inbibe will engage and enrich you.
Free event, RSVP required: rsvp.lacasaazul@gmail.com
Here's some excellent
news...
PEN Oakland officially announced
the winners of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Awards. I'm honored to see
Ocotillo Dreams make the list.
PEN OAKLAND
" The Blue Collar PEN" The New York Times
Announces
22st Annual
2012 Literary Awards
Saturday, December 1, 2012, 2 PM – 5 PM
(Oakland , CA), September 17, 2012 ---
The 22nd Annual PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Awards will
take place on Saturday, December 1, 2012, at the Oakland Public Library,
Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Avenue from 2 to 5 p.m. The ceremony is free and
open to the public, and will be followed by a reception and book
signings. PEN Oakland , founded in 1989, is a chapter of PEN
International, founded in 1921. Dubbed "the blue collar PEN" by
the New York Times, PEN Oakland annually sponsors the PEN
Oakland-Josephine Miles Book Awards, named for the late poet and faculty
member of U.C. Berkeley's English Department. This year marks the 22st
anniversary of the awards. Each year PEN Oakland presents an award to
outstanding book titles published in the previous year. The Awards were created twenty years ago to honor writers of
exceptional works often not acknowledged by the mainstream literary
community. Judged by respected
writers, the awards honor books that both reflect a multi-cultural or
marginalized viewpoint and represent the highest standards of literature.
THE
2012 PEN OAKLAND-JOSEPHINE MILES LITERARY AWARD WINNERS
Ocotillo
Dreams by Melinda Palacio.
Bilingual Review Press. (novel)
The
Armageddon of Funk
by Michael Warr.
Tia Chucha Press. (poetry)
Solitude of
Five Moons by Aurora Harris.
Broadside Press/University of Detroit Mercy Press. (poetry)
La Negra y
Blanca: Fugue & Commentary by Deena Metzger.
Hand to Hand Press. (novel)
Fug You by Ed Sanders.
Da Capo Press. (memoir)
Marsh Hawk Press (poetry)
Salvage
the Bones by Jesmyn Ward.
Bloomsbury. (novel)
CENSORSHIP AND
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Alexander
Cockburn is the winner of the 2012 Censorship Award.
Q.R.
Hand will receive the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Countdown to Publication:
ONE MONTH
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| How Fire Is a Story, Waiting (Tia Chucha Press, Fall 2012) |
"Palacio’s
work is expansive, physical, funeral-wet, elevated, funny, existential,
woman-story, jazzy and Pachukona. She is unafraid to dive head-on into
questions of death, loss and self. Into the fiery entwined spikes of
father-daughter estrangements, mother-daughter intimacies and most of all, she
is “insomniac” bold in this volume as an ongoing sequence on self. Melinda’s collection has Bop and
“swagger,” lingo, song, denuncia,
compassion and wild, unexpected turns– all the key ingredients and hard-won practices
of a poet (and shaman) in command of her powers. I don’t think there is anything like this book. ¡Brillantissima!"
-
Juan Felipe Herrera
4 comments:
Melinda, I am very proud of you...and as the person who nominated your novel for the Pen Oakland award, I hope to make it and say a few words! Onward!
Fabulous news.
Congratulations, Melinda. You make all of us on La Bloga proud. And we know you're having fun now.
Melinda, thanks for a lively, thorough accounting of all the wonderful literary news our Latina/o authors are involved in. I'm very glad to see the increasing attention and activities our writers are receiving and engaged in. And a big, hearty CONGRATULATIONS to your novel's honoring, and to your forthcoming poetry book. You are inspirational to all of us! Keep it up.
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