“How to Date a Flying Mexican” comes to the New Short Fiction Series, August 31, in a live streamed performance

The New Short Fiction Series, Los Angeles' longest running spoken word series, presents selections from How To Date A Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press) by Daniel A. Olivas, Wednesday, August 31, on Crowdcast. This live streamed performance stars host and spoken word artist Sally Shore, with guest cast Holger Moncada Jr. (Promised Land, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels) and Jill Remez (The Neighborhood, The Bold and the Beautiful). 

Performance stream begins at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $12.00 advance purchase, $20 day of stream. For tickets and program information, visit https://www.crowdcast.io/e/how-to-date-a-flying/register.

Praise for How to Date a Flying Mexican

"How to Date a Flying Mexican is a beautifully realized work that comes out of the depths of the Mexican and Mexican American cultural experience."

    —Michael Nava, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Throughout all of his stories, there are strong Chicano characters, who embody tales that range from the laugh-out-loud funny to the heartbreaking. A timely retrospective from an important voice in Latinx literature."

    —Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed

"Prompted by tragedy—the death of his father and the pandemic—Olivas revisits decades of writing to produce this collection of new and previously published stories. Olivas’s work is surreal, dystopian, critical, and introspective, ultimately moving into contemporary political rhetoric."

    —Alta Journal

“Daniel Olivas loves to tell stories and his writing reflects that joy. Every story is told with a wink and a smile, encouraging you to follow along for the ride.”

    —Maceo Montoya, associate professor of Chicano/a Studies, University of California, Davis, and author of Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces

“From gritty realism to mythic and sci-fi speculative, Olivas dishes up an exquisite feast of short fictions filled to the brim with small and outsized everyday struggles—and failures.”

    —Frederick Luis Aldama, award winning author and Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at UT Austin 

 “This kinetic new collection of stories is exuberant and poignant, filled with the homegrown details of Latinx life as well as a kind of cheerful, saucy magic.”

     —Yxta Maya Murray, law professor, Loyola Law School and author of The World Doesn’t Work that Way, but It Could: Stories

Patti Smith's Nobel Laureate Ceremony Performance

Melinda Palacio

One of the most exciting moments to come out of the announcement of Bob Dylan's Nobel Laureate in Literature was not his long silence or subsequent acceptance speech, but Patti Smith's singing "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" at the 2016 Nobel Prize ceremony.

What's remarkable about her performance is that the super star blanked on the lyrics, yet went on to sing a show-stopping rendition of an already moving song she's known by heart since she was a teenager. After the first verse she became disoriented and stopped. She then apologized and expressed her nervousness. While nerves never go away, an unseasoned performer would probably fake it and simply continue. I know I would.

In my experiences reading my own work and performing my poetry, I've always felt compelled to keep going, even if I've made a mistake. Somewhere along the line, I've been taught to follow an unwritten rule of keep reading and performing, regardless of missing a word, sentence, stanza or verse. Making mistakes happen to everyone. I know I've blanked out on words that I've written, poems that I could usually recite anytime, anywhere. Part of the writing life is having the opportunity to read your work aloud. With that, comes the real possibility of skipping a phrase or pausing extra long, or taking a sip of water while recomposing yourself.

I usually work through my nerves or blunders. Few people, except for my husband, Steve who knows my work backwards and forwards, realize my mistakes. However, singing alongside live musicians is less forgiving than reading.

Patti Smith did an extraordinary thing by admitting her nervousness and breaking the illusion of a perfect performance. I was in awe by her performance and by her essay, "How Does It Feel," in the NewYorker.

In an even braver moment explaining how she felt afterwards, she details what happened on stage. "Unaccustomed to such an overwhelming case of nerves, I was unable to continue," she writes, " I hadn't forgotten the words that were now a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out."    

Smith's essay was such an honest gift. As if the song weren't enough, the essay lets us in on what she was thinking before, during, and after her performance. All of my questions as to how she ended up choosing the song and how she found the courage to stop and start again were answered. She was asked to perform one of her own songs for the Nobel prize, but upon hearing that Dylan had won, she changed her mind and sung a favorite of hers and her late husband's.

The song's emotional and political gravitas speaks to current events, especially the atrocities in Allepo. While the songs lyrics include the words "I stumbled alongside of twelve misty mountains," and ends with "And I'll know my song well before I start singing," Smith acknowledges that that she entered the song in a way that made the hiccup necessary and beautiful. In her 70 years, she is able to state the reason for her calling: "Why do we commit our work: Why do we perform? It is above all for the entertainment and transformation of the people. It is all for them. "

Sor Juana Festival 2009

The National Museum of Mexican Art, In Collaboration with Various Texas Organizations Presents The 2009 Texas Sor Juana Festival

A Tribute to Mexican Women Austin • Dallas • Fort Worth • Houston • San Antonio March – May 2009 The National Museum of Mexican Art, in collaboration with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Museo Alameda, Arte Público Press, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA), The Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC), Talento Bilingüe de Houston (TBH) and various women’s organizations will host the 2009 Texas Sor Juana Festival, A Tribute to Mexican Women.

The Sor Juana Festival returns to Texas to celebrate its 3rd anniversary. This year, the NMMA is proud to announce the expansion of the Festival to include our new partners: Artes de la Rosa in Fort Worth, Children’s Museum of Houston, Discovery Green in Houston, Latino Cultural Center in Dallas and Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin. The Sor Juana Festival has become the largest Latino performing arts festival in the country.

Currently, the festival is divided into two seasons: March through May in Texas and April through June in Chicago/Milwaukee with plans of further expansion into other cities. The Sor Juana Festival is a multidisciplinary festival that honors one of Mexico’s greatest writers, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century Mexican nun who valued the education of women.

Sor Juana was a celebrated playwright, mathematician and poet in her own time and considered to be the first feminist of the Americas. Through this unique festival, we celebrate the legacy of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and pay tribute to the rich artistic accomplishments of Mexican women from Mexico and the United States.

The festival includes: culinary arts, dance, film, literature, music, theater, and visual arts and takes place at different venues throughout the Texas cities of Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, Texas.

This year’s Sor Juana Festival is going to be the largest and most diverse to date. NMMA is thrilled to be working with such dedicated and distinguished cultural institutions throughout Texas, that share our vision of recognizing the many contributions that Mexican/Mexican American women have made to the arts, our community and our lives.

Audiences will be amazed by the 2009 Texas Sor Juana Festival’s stellar line-up, which not only includes well established names such as: Vikki Carr, Girl in a Coma, Lila Downs, Eugenia León and Tania Libertad but also highlights local gems like: Gina Chavez, Graciela Limon, Norma Zenteno and Tammy Gomez while introducing artists from other parts of the country like Monica Palacios and Patti Vasquez.

"This festival is dedicated to the countless women in our lives and throughout history that were never able to live out their dream, a dream Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz fought for: a women’s right to education, to learn, to grow and live her dream. We hope this festival, in some ways, honors the dream they were never able to fulfill.” – Jorge Valdivia, Festival Director / Director of Performing Arts, NMMA.

For the schedule of events, please visit:
www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org
or download the online brochure at:
http://www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/downloads/SorJuana_FNL.pdf

About the National Museum of Mexican Art:

On December 5th, 2006, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum changed its name to the National Museum of Mexican Art in recognition of its 20th Anniversary and its status as the largest and leading Mexican cultural institution in the U.S. The Museum remains a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization.

The NMMA is the largest Latino Arts organization in the U.S. and the only Latino museum accredited by American Association of Museums. The NMMA presents Visual Arts Exhibitions, Performance Festivals, and Education Programs to more than 200,000 annually including 60,000 K-12 students. 90.5 FM Radio Arte is the Museum's youth-driven bilingual public radio station committed to advancing the voices of a multi-layered society through socially conscious journalism, media literacy, training and programming.

The Museum's hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Admission is free. For information call 312-738-1503 or visit the NMMA's web site www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org 1852 W. 19th Street Chicago, Illinois 60608

Palabra Pura News -- New Latino Poetry on Tour

Palabra Pura, Chicago's home for cutting edge, innovative Latino poetry is evolving in exciting ways, with its 2008 calendar of stellar talent solidly in place. While still basing itself at the California Clipper, Palabra Pura will begin to also hold events at Latino venues throughout the city. This month, join nationally know poet and performer, Tim Z. Hernandez and Chicago actor, poet and activist, Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez.

Wednesday,
February 20th. 8 pm Decima Musa Restaurant
1901 S. Loomis St. Chicago, IL

About the poets: Tim Z. Hernandez is a writer and performer originally from central California. His writing and performance texts have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, and his performances featured at prestigious venues across the nation, including: LA’s Getty Center Museum, The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Stanford University, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In the past, he has been commissioned by major groups such as the United Way of Greater Los Angeles to write and perform his original plays on issues of homelessness and poverty. Currently, he’s working in tandem with Poets & Writers Inc, and California Center for the Book, offering bilingual poetry workshops across the United States.

He is the recipient of several notable awards including: 2006 American Book Award for his debut collection of poetry Skin Tax, San Francisco Foundation’s James Duval Phelan Award, a Best Solo Production Award for his one man show, Diaries of a Macho, and the Zora Neal Hurston Award for writers of color dedicated to their communities. In the interest of artistic development, Hernandez’s focus is on excavating stories that bring to light the limitless potential of the human capacity, stories of physical and metaphysical journeys, with special attention to marginalized populations. When he’s not busy teaching creative writing and performance, he’s touring the country, collaborating with his word-music-theater collective, Brown Lotus, and offering workshops to Universities, arts groups, cultural centers, foundations, and libraries. Tim holds a B.A. in Writing & Literature from Naropa University, the first accredited Buddhist School in the west.

Currently, he resides in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two daughters.

What People Are Saying About Tim Z. Hernandez

"Tim Hernandez is one of the finest and most exciting new talents to emerge from the new generation of Latino writers!”- Bloomsbury Review, Ray Gonzalez

“It’s too reductionistic to call Tim Hernandez a performance poet…though his voice and rhythms surely benefit from the energy behind a microphone, the complexity of his ideas merit the slower pace study made possible through the written pages of Skin Tax.” - El Paso Times Book Review Rigoberto Gonzalez

“Tim Hernandez is a dynamic force as a writer and performer!” - Gary Soto Author of, Nickel & Dime

“Hernandez is a poet of obvious and quickly realized skills…his images are brilliant, sharp, and concise, his language spare yet rich. Poetry of the here and now, Brown Lotus is the kind of task that should have been undertaken long ago!” - Amiri Baraka, Author of, Transbluesency

“I like Tim’s boldness, his willingness to be raw and trust the content of the poem to make it real and legitimate, his words sizzle and spark with excitement, targeting with a relentless passion his desire to express what he is trying to convey.” - Jimmy Santiago Baca, Author of, A Place To Stand

“[Tim Hernandez] …represents a whole new direction in the Latino literary world!” - Juan Felipe Herrera, Author of, Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler, and 187 Reasons Mexicans Can't Cross the Border

“[Skin Tax] is poetry not for delicate sensibilities, unafraid, it dares to stand out and speak of subjects commonly eschewed by other poets.” - Midwest Book Review

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Stephanie Gentry-Fernandez is a poet and performer from the South Side whose male side you may recognize from Teatro Luna's recent production of "Machos." She has a deep personal commitment to anti-oppression work and currently works at the Broadway Youth Center.

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Letras Latinas, The Wind Shifts and a National Tour!

Letras Latinas, The Guild Complex, and the University of Arizona Press
are proud to present

The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry ON TOUR

“In the hour of extremes, long live these brave wordsmiths of American letters.”
— Sandra Cisneros

February 23, 2008, Palm Beach, FL
@The Society of the Four Arts

Eduardo C. Corral

Kevin A. González

Sheryl Luna

May 31, 2008, Minneapolis, MN
@The Loft Literary Center

Urayoán Noel

Carl Marcum

Adela Najarro

Emmy Pérez

September 25, 2008, Seattle, WA
@Richard Hugo House

Richard Blanco

María Meléndez

Steven Cordova

Deborah Parédez

“The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry ON TOUR” is supported in part by the Ford Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Southwest Airlines through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts.

Letras Latinas is the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The Guild Complex is a community-based literary organization in Chicago.

The Wind Shifts gathers, for the first time, works by emerging Latino and Latina poets in the twenty-first century. Here readers will discover 25 new and vital voices including Naomi Ayala, Richard Blanco, David Dominguez, Gina Franco, Sheryl Luna, and Urayoán Noel.

The writers included in this volume have published poetry in well-regarded literary magazines. Some have published chapbooks or first collections, but none had published more than one book at the time of selection. This results in a freshness that energizes the enterprise. Certainly there is poetry here that is political, but this is not a polemical book; it is a poetry book. While conscious of their roots, the artists are equally conscious of living in the contemporary world—fully engaged with the possibilities of subject and language. The variety is tantalizing.

There are sonnets and a sestina; poems about traveling and living overseas; poems rooted in the natural world and poems embedded in suburbia; poems nourished by life on the U.S.–Mexico border and poems electrified by living in Chicago or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City. Some of the poetry is traditional; some is avant-garde; some is informed by traditional poetry in Spanish; some follows English forms that are hundreds of years old. There are love poems, spells that defy logic, flashes of hope, and moments of loss. In short, this is the rich and varied poetry of young, talented North American Latinos and Latinas.

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ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY

“In the hour of extremes, long live these brave wordsmiths of American letters. Hallowed be the poets when the news is diffused in the name of susto. Viva the citizens of truth. Hallelujah the devotees of language, the languished souls enamored of the syllable.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

“The poets in this anthology seem as though they just want to write poems, not specifically Latino poems. They are much too cross-pollinated for that—we all are, if truth be told—which is what makes that synthesis possible, the marvelous marbling at the core." —Aleida Rodríguez, author of Garden of Exile

“Here it is again, the shock of the new, eager as always to unsettle the present, to reconfigure the past while redefining the future. Ah, the impetus of the young!” —Ilan Stavans

“At last, a 21st century anthology that confirms the breadth and depth and diversity of contemporary Latino/a writing. The poems in this collection defy any stereotypes about ‘Latino poetry’ and testify to the rich variousness of the American Latino/a experience. Readers—rejoice!" —Valerie Martínez, author of Absence, Luminescent and World to World

“With jagged beauty, this collection expands our consciousness: documents and honors lives often absent from American poetry. In these pages, we join souls in struggle, almas luchando." —Pat Mora

"The title of the ravishing collection of poems by 25 Latino and Latina writers can be read as an allusion to change and to the fact that poetry is a force, like wind, that knows know borders. Whether inspired by family, love, despair, poems by Rilke, or a painting by Jose Clemente Orozco, the poets gathered here are involved in the infinite possibilities of language."
— Booklist

"This is a compelling and exhilarating addition to Latino letters."— El Paso Times

Lisa Alvarado