Chicanada @ LoneStarCon. Melinda Palacio @ NHCC. Café Fresco @ Gallista Gallery

World SciFi Convention wants Chicano/mexicano programming

This past summer I ran a four-part series entitled Spic vs Spec, in which I spoke to latino participation in the U.S. spec fiction world. That world is a changin'.

Next year, one of the largest fantasy / sci-fi gatherings will be held in San Antonio, Texas. What will make it stand out is that organizers want to diversify their programming into the Spanish-speaking and mexicano world. Qué bueno!

La Bloga was recently contacted by Lone Star Con3 program organizers with the following request:

"We want to develop a Spanish Language Track to the World Science Fiction Convention. Panels might not be bilingual, but should include Spanish-speaking fans, TV shows, and unique Spanish language contributions to Science Fiction & Fantasy. We are looking for local authors from the San Antonio area to help us put together programming that would promote SF&F from Spanish language sources, who are interested in helping us develop that track along with local clubs and media."

This effort is in the beginning stages, but offers an opportunity for Chicano and mexicano spec authors and readers to enter an arena of U.S. literature that is just beginning to learn about us. It also provides us a new mechanism to take our literature to mainstream readers.

Other gente outside the San Anto area can possibly also get involved in some way. I believe there will be many opportunities and ample reason not only to attend, but to participate in enrichening this convention.

Please contact us for further info if you are interested. Note this, too: whatever is accomplished in San Anto can possibly be taken to similar conventions in the U.S. in the future. I among others are definitely interested in that. And spread the word.

LoneStarCon3, Aug. 29 - Sept. 2 2013, San Antonio, Texas, Aztlán

Melinda Palacio to read at National Hispanic Cultural Center

Award winning novelist and poet Melinda Palacio will read from and sign her new collection of poetry How Fire is a Story, Waiting at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on Saturday November 17th at 2 PM in the Salón Ortega. The event is free to the public.

According to Northwestern University Press, “Melinda Palacio’s newest poetry collection creates images that are at once heartbreaking and humorous. She tackles elemental subjects of family and childhood with the same depth and grace as that of myth making and death. As the only child of a mother who died too young, she infuses her words with longing and life, and celebrates the women who came before her. Each poem offers up the truth in a fearless and unsentimental voice.”

Melinda Palacio lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans. Her novel Ocotillo Dreams (ASU Bilingual Press) received the Mariposa Award for Best First Book from the International Latino Book Awards. She also received the 2012 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. She was also a finalist for the Premio Aztlán for 2011. Her poetry chap book Folsom Lockdown was the winner of Kulupi Press’ 2009 Sense of Place award. She is a contributing columnist to the Latino literature blog, La Bloga.

No doubt, her new collection of poetry explores similarly complex territory. Contact Greta Pullen at (505) 724-4752 or e-mail greta.pullen@state.nm.us.

Joe Lopez invites you to Café Fresco

Café Fresco is now open at Gallista Gallery, San Anto. We are excited about the cafe/sandwich bar re-opening at Gallista, under new management. If you're in the area, stop by and help us welcome our new cafe manager Yolanda Aravelo.
Cafe Fresco will be open Tuesday - Saturday from 7 am - 2 pm.
The Menu includes breakfast and light lunch items, such as English Muffins filled with ham, egg, and/or sausage, Buttermilk Biscuits by the dozen and half-dozen, and Hoagie sandwiches.

Enjoy local art with your coffee! - Free Wifi
Gallista Gallery, 1913 S. Flores St., San Antonio, Texas, Aztlán


Es todo, hoy,
RudyG, aka Rudy Ch. Garcia, author of The Closet of Discarded Dreams, the Chicano fantasy with a Chicano hero

October Leaves

Melinda Palacio

You know your book is official when you spot it in a bookstore's window.

Next week is the official roll out of my new poetry book, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting. There have been several preambles, including a reading and a few sales at the Las Comadres Writers Conference in New York. The excitement of showing off my first full-length poetry book caused me to overnight 10 copies to myself. Of course, I didn't tell anyone about this prideful and foolish act, not to mention the shipping expense which I will not recoup even though I sold all ten copies. I knew my days and luck in New York were coming to a close, at least for 2012. Along with the three trips to New York, beginning with the Mariposa Award at the International Latino Book Awards in May, the Brooklyn Book Festival in September, and the Las Comadres y Los Compadres Writers Conference, this year has proven to be more than thrilling, thanks to all three of my NY hosts Sherman Chan, Toni Plummer, and Lizzie and Mark Cofrancesco.

At the Las Comadres y Los Compadres Writers Conference, NY

The next preamble was my visit to the Michigan City Public Library in Michigan City, Indiana, and Purdue North Central. The library's format consisted of an interview by Michigan City's Lucrecia Guerrero and then a reading. After the interview, Lucrecia left her chair on stage and took a seat in the audience. From the vantage of some photos, it looks as if I am pulling a Clint Eastwood and talking to an empty chair. 

That empty chair thing...

A minor adjustment to this awkward format is my only suggestion. The librarians, staff, and townsfolk who came out on a rainy day impressed me. I love the town because they featured me on the front page of their newspaper two days in a row. Also, reading at Purdue North Central and visiting Kenny Kincaid's class was a highlight. 

Savoring the rare moment of being on the front page of Michigan City's The News Dispatch.

While I was in Indiana, I received notice from Bilingual Press that Ocotillo Dreams is in reprint. More gratitude to everyone who has ordered a copy of the novel for themselves and their classes.

My hosts in Indiana, Lucrecia Guerrero and Jerry Holt, sure made me feel like a rockstar with their warm welcome, not to mention they drove me everywhere, including gorgeous Lake Michigan, where I had a chance to see the Fall leaves in their golden splendor.

Fall Colors at Purdue North Central

The October portion of the Fire tour winds down with the Texas Book Festival this weekend. Reyna Grande will be on three panels and I will be in conversation with Jeff Biggers, Sunday October 28 at 1:45-2:45 pm in the Extension Room E2.030 of the Texas State Capitol. The moderator will be Erica Grieder.

When I return to California on Tuesday, I will be on David Starkey's the Creative Community Show. If the name sounds familiar, David Starkey is Santa Barbara's poet laureate emeritus and one of the hardest working poets and educators I know. He has this to say about my new poetry book:

“Continue to fix broken things,” Melinda Palacio writes in “Ramona Street,” and the poems in How Fire Is a Story, Waiting are consumed with naming the problems of the world and trying—however provisionally—to set them right.  Palacio’s verse, dense with imagery, is by turns sorrowful and sardonic, and always the voice is her own.  There’s a little universe in this book: enter and learn."

November begins with a presentation in Compton at El Camino College and then a talk at UCSB the next day on November 2.

If you are wondering, 'does she ever stop?'.

Answer:

I am taking a vacation to Cuba and will be back in time to present How Fire Is a Story, Waiting at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque November 17 and then the next day at Luivette Resto's poetry series La Palabra at Avenue 50 studio in Highland Park at 2pm.

But first, let's get through the end of October and prepare to honor our ancestors and dress up as our favorite fictional character. Don't miss readings by your favorite blogeuros. Here's where Rudy will be this week:

Oct. 24-31, Bloguero Rudy Ch. Garcia will be in HOUSTON at the River Oaks Bookstore; and in SAN ANTONIO at the SW Workers Union Underground Library, The Twig Book Shop and at Palo Alto College. Click here for details.

Garcia's author interviews can be heard on Tue. Oct 23, 7:30pm CST on Tony Diaz's Nuestra Palabra - Latino Writers Having Their Say, KPFT 90.1fm in Houston, and seen on the Great Day SA daytime program, KENS5 TV in San Anto, Sun. Oct. 28, beginning at 12:00 noon CST.

  

Visit my website, www.melindapalacio.com, to find out where I'll be next. I am happy to send a handwritten postcard (good luck deciphering my writing) to anyone playing the 'Where in the World Is Melinda' game on Facebook and twitter. 

Melinda in Print:

DK Writings Interviews me.

The Rush of Publication

Melinda Palacio

Countdown to Publication: Two Months. Coming soon, Tía Chucha Press, October 2012

Last month, I turned in the final manuscript for my new poetry book. It was hard to let go of How Fire Is a Story, Waiting. I enjoyed knowing that the pages were safely tucked away in my computer, backed up in three different places, with several hard copies adding to the overall chaos of my office. A final manuscript means the last chance I will ever have to rewrite, revise, and breathe on the poems before they are released into the world. A month ago, a year ago, five years ago, I was anxious to turn my scattered poems into a coherent book. I asked, pleaded, and prayed for the book to have a chance to be released into the wild. So why am I worrying now?

The worrying only gets good from this point on with each review and each book sold, or not sold. Who wants a poetry book when readers are mourning the end of the Shades of Grey trilogy?  One author is capitalizing on Shades of Earl Grey Tea, one way of riding the success of twenty million copies sold.

Over in my world, in the no one told me I was supposed to make money side, I was pleased to see my novel, Ocotillo Dreams, listed as a top Latino pick for Remezcla's 5 Things to Read This Summer That Are Not 50 Shades of Grey. 

In another nice moment, a bookstore contacted me to say that my poetry book was listed in the Fall catalogue at Northwestern University Press (Tía Chucha's distributor) and would I be interested in a book signing. Would I? Of course. I'm old school when it comes to book promotions and signings. I prefer going to an actual bookstore and reading to people who love books so much, they prefer an in person interaction to a book trailer or Skype reading. I cherish a handwritten letter to an ephemeral email. And, yes, I write all my posts in my notebook before transferring to the computer and adding links and photographs. I write everything, poetry, fiction, and essays with pen and paper first.

All my worrying about my new poetry book ceased when I saw the final cover and the generous blurbs from Juan Felipe Herrera and David Starkey came in. Two more months until the publication of How Fire Is a Story, Waiting. Follow the countdown at www.melindapalacio.com and La Bloga.

"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

“Continue to fix broken things,” Melinda Palacio writes in “Ramona Street,” and the poems in How Fire Is a Story, Waiting are consumed with naming the problems of the world and trying—however provisionally—to set them right.  Palacio’s verse, dense with imagery, is by turns sorrowful and sardonic, and always the voice is her own.  There’s a little universe in this book: enter and learn." --David Starkey

Book Party for Reyna Grande

Reyna Grande's publication party, August 25

La Bloga friend, Reyna Grande is having a publication party for her new memoir, The Distance Between Us (Atria Books 2012). For those who wake up with the Los Angeles Times, you would've already heard all about Reyna Grande's new review. The Distance Between Us received a great review from Hector Tobar at the L.A. Times.

Tobar writes: 

"Grande relentlessly mines this thematically rich terrain in "The Distance Between Us." With two deeply flawed adults at its center — her embittered father and her less-than-reliable mother — it's a brutally honest book that avoids the sentimentality that permeates many Latino immigrant narratives."

Grande recently said she enjoyed tiling her home office. "Doing manual labor reminds me of my father," she said. "My dad was a handyman." In The Distance Between Us, Reyna paints a complicated portrait of her father. La Bloga has followed Grande's journey as she's laid the foundation for a career as an author and an important literary voice. 

Reserve your ticket to Reyna Grande's book party and fundraiser for Chirla and Libros Schmibros, An Evening of Dreaming Publication Party, Saturday, August 25, 2012 from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm at Pan American Bank Headquarters, 3626 East First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90063.