Speaking AxolotI: The San Pancho Edition

Co-presented by Oakland Public Library.

Welcome to our very first Litquake Out Loud event, as the East Bay’s long-running monthly Chicano/Latinx reading series crosses the bridge to San Francisco for a very special night of Spanglish Poesia, Musica y Performance Art Brujeria. A true Spanglish Flor y Canto Zoom visitation by some of the most chingon Latinx poetas in these DisUnited States.

Anthony Cody is the author of Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, April 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. He is from Fresno, California with lineage in both the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl. His poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Boiler, ctrl+v journal, among others. Anthony is a member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle where he co-edited How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011). He has received fellowships from The Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Arizona State University’s Desert Nights, Rising Stars, as well as the inaugural CantoMundo Guzmán Mendoza / Paredez Fellowship for his work-in-progress manuscript. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets. Anthony is a recent MFA-Creative Writing graduate at Fresno State, where he serves as a fellow in Juan Felipe Herrera’s Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio. He supports for CantoMundo, and is an associate poetry editor for Noemi Press.

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he is a co-editor of the anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT.

Raquel Salas Rivera (Mayagüez, 1985) is a Puerto Rican poet, translator, and editor. His honors include being named the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia and receiving the New Voices Award from Puerto Rico’s Festival de la Palabra. He is the author of five full-length poetry books. His third book, lo terciario/ the tertiary won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry and was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award. His fourth book, while they sleep (under the bed is another country), was longlisted for the 2020 Pen America Open Book Award and was a finalist for CLMP’s 2020 Firecracker Award. His fifth book, x/ex/exis won the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. antes que isla es volcán/before island is volcano, his sixth book, is an imaginative leap into Puerto Rico’s decolonial future and is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2022. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania and now writes and teaches in Puerto Rico.

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta is a queer Nicaragüense Jewish artist, poet, full spectrum reproductive care worker, and youngest child. Their first book, The Easy Body, was published in 2017 by Timeless, Infinite Light; their work can be found in New Life Magazine, SFMOMA Open Space, the Nightboat Books blog, & around. Tatiana's next book, La Movida, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2022. They're currently working on a novella about a romance between a Chicana country & western musician & a lesbian Sandinista solidarity activist in 1970's San Francisco, which is really an excuse to research northern Mexican psychedelic rock, the Mission District in the 70's, the lesbian history of Valencia Street, & the history of Chicanx community radio.

FREE, $5-10 suggested donation.
Registration is required for Zoom access. Spots are limited.
Event will also be livecasted on Facebook Live.