Category: Author news

Frederick Luis Aldama on MSNBC’s American Voices Talking ‘Marvel’s Voices: Communidades’

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Mari Herreras

December 21, 2021

Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor LatinX, recently shared the small-screen with writer Daniel José Older on the MSNBC show American Voices hosted by Alicia Menendez to talk about Marvel Comics’ Marvel’s Voices: Communidades, a one-shot in the groundbreaking Marvel’s Voices series highlighting the cultural richness of Marvel Comics and uplifting new voices in the comic book industry. Communidades turns the spotlight to Latinx heroes and creators from the Marvel Universe.

Aldama, author of Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics, the 2018 Eisner Award Winner for Best Scholarly/Academic Work, wrote the issue’s introduction about the history of Latinx heroes and creators in the comic book industry. Older is featured in the issue, revisiting the legacy of Marvel’s first super hero of Latino descent, Hector Ayala aka White Tiger, in an inspiring story rooted in real history.

Aldama is co-editor of the University of Arizona Press Latinx Pop Culture series. The series, which includes Latinx Superheroes among many other award-winning titles, aims to shed light on all aspects of Latinx cultural production and consumption, as well as the Latinx presence globally in popular cultural phenomena in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

https://www.tiktok.com/@professorlatinx0/video/7043531131118947631?is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v1&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=7043900158992647686

https://www.tiktok.com/@professorlatinx0/video/7043563612245495086?is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v1&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=7043900158992647686

Urayoán Noel’s ‘Transversal’ on 2022 PEN Open Book Award Longlist

Posted on December 15, 2021December 15, 2021 by Mari Herreras

December 15, 2021

We are thrilled to announce that Urayoán Noel‘s poetry collection, Transversal, has been selected for the Longlist of the 2022 PEN America Open Book Award. Finalists will be announced in early 2022 and the winner will be honored at the 2022 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony.

“These Longlists are a ‘who’s who’ of the most exceptional writers of our generation and the next,” said Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, senior director of literary programs at PEN America. “Reading their names evokes memories of some of our all-time favorite works that brought us comfort during this strange year.”

Transversal takes a disruptive approach to poetic translation, opening up alternative ways of reading as poems get translated or transcreated into entirely new pieces. Noel masterfully examines his native Puerto Rico and the broader Caribbean as sites of transversal poetics and politics. Transversal seeks to disrupt standard English and Spanish, and it celebrates the nonequivalence between languages. Inspired by Caribbean poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, the collection celebrates Caribbean practices of creolization as maximalist, people-centered, affect-loaded responses to the top-down violence of austerity politics. This groundbreaking, modular approach to poetic translation opens up alternative ways of reading in any language.

The Longlists represent 11 PEN America literary awards. The PEN Open Book Award, formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, invites book submissions by authors of color, published in the United States during the applicable calendar year. The Open Book Award was created by PEN America’s Open Book Committee, a group committed to racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. Works of fiction, literary nonfiction, biography/memoir, poetry, and other works of literary character are strongly preferred.

From Pen America:

In an era of publishing consolidation, more than half (53 percent) of the longlisted titles come from independent and university presses. Almost a quarter come from small independent publishers (12 percent) and university presses (nine percent).

“Our Longlists highlight the groundbreaking and vital work produced by independent publishers, many of which continue to face significant challenges in today’s publishing market,” Shariyf said. “These publishers are often leaders in promoting diverse voices and stories not just along racial and gender lines, but showcasing cultural and geographic diversity, too. The Awards ceremony allows writers and publishers to gather with readers and champions of creative free expression and celebrate the power of storytelling as an inclusive literary community.”

Check out all literary award Longlists, including the Open Book Award, here. You can also read the press release here.

Current Shares ‘Sound of Exclusion’ Excerpt on How NPR Overlooked Latinx Listeners

Posted on December 10, 2021December 9, 2021 by Mari Herreras

December 10, 2021

Current, a nonprofit news organization covering public media in the U.S for professionals in the industry, recently shared an excerpt of Christopher Chávez‘s The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

The Sound of Exclusion examines how National Public Radio conceptualizes the Latinx listener, arguing that NPR employs a number of industry practices that secure its position as a white public space while relegating Latinx listeners to the periphery. These practices are tied to a larger cultural logic. Latinx identity is differentiated from national identity, which can be heard through NPR’s cultivation of an idealized dialect, situating whiteness at its center. Pushing Latinx listeners to the edges of public radio has crucial implications for Latinx participation in civic discourses, as identifying who to include in the “public” audience necessarily involves a process of exclusion.

Here’s part of the excerpt from Current:

When I spoke with NPR’s Bill Siemering about how the network originally conceived of its listener, he affirmed that NPR was initially designed to serve ethnically diverse audiences. However, Siemering’s conception of diversity was centered primarily on Black and Indigenous communities. This orientation came largely from his own professional experiences. Siemering had previously served as general manager of college radio station WBFO-FM in Buffalo. There, he spent his first years at the station learning about the local community, conducting interviews with the African American community, which were used to develop a series called To Be Negro. Siemering also worked with Indigenous communities living at nearby Niagara Falls to produce a series of programs on the Iroquois Confederacy called Nation Within a Nation.

Siemering admitted that Latinxs were not much of a consideration when he wrote his mission statement, stating, “At that time, there wasn’t much awareness about Latinos.” This is to be expected. In 1970, when the network first aired, Latinxs accounted for only 4.5 percent of the total U.S. population.¹ But when I asked Siemering how a single network was meant to appeal to the broad spectrum of the nation, he stated that a unifying trait of NPR’s audience is curiosity. “Being curious is very important,” Siemering told me. “That cuts across all divides.”

The notion of curiosity has been a defining characteristic of the NPR audience over the course of its history and is reflected in the marketing materials NPR uses to sell its audiences to corporate underwriters. For example, NPR markets a number of products under its “Curious Listener” series, which educates listeners on how to appreciate music and culture. However, Siemering was firm in his belief that NPR should not consider the economic value of its listeners to be its paramount consideration. When we spoke, he read aloud a sentence in the mission statement that he felt was particularly important: “NPR would not regard its audience as a market.” Yet, this is exactly how the network regards the listener. The research conducted by Audience Research Analysis was designed to cultivate a listening audience that would support the network financially. This strategy has, in turn, informed how NPR conceives of, and pursues, its ideal Latinx listener.

Read the entire excerpt here.

Gustavo Arellano Includes ‘Rewriting the Chicano Movement’ in LA Times Column

Posted on December 2, 2021December 1, 2021 by Mari Herreras

December 1, 2021

In his recent Los Angeles Times column, “Mexicans have fought for a better California for 171 years. These books show how,” Gustavo Arellano highlights four books on Chicano and Mexican-American history in California, including Rewriting the Chicano Movement: New Histories of Mexican American Activism in the Civil Rights Era, edited by Mario T. García, and Ellen McCracken.

From Arellano:

The most moving chapter deals with el movimiento in Fresno County during the 1960s and 1970s, where students from rural towns across the Central Valley came to the big city for a college degree only to find a society out of the Deep South.

“What Mexicans encountered [there],” said author Patrick Fontes, “was an area wholly founded by whites for whites — they indeed entered a foreign land.”

But Chicanos persisted, and vowed to return to their hometowns to make them better. Today, the Central Valley is slowly turning politically purple, like grapes ripening on a vine.

Read the entire column here.

New York Public Library Includes ‘Transversal’ in Best Books of 2021 List

Posted on November 29, 2021 by Mari Herreras

November 29, 2021

Urayoán Noel’s Transversal was listed in the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2021.

Featuring Noel’s bilingual playfulness, intellect, and irreverent political imagination, Transversal contains personal reflections on love, desire, and loss filtered through a queer approach to form, expanding upon Noel’s experiments with self-translation in his celebrated collection Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico. Transversal seeks to disrupt standard English and Spanish, and it celebrates the nonequivalence between languages. Inspired by Caribbean poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, the collection celebrates Caribbean practices of creolization as maximalist, people-centered, affect-loaded responses to the top-down violence of austerity politics.

To read the entire Best of 2021 list, visit here.

New Books Network Interviews Michelle Téllez on ‘Border Women’

Posted on November 23, 2021November 21, 2021 by Mari Herreras

November 23, 2021

Michelle Téllez was recently interviewed by David-James Gonzales, assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University, on her new book, Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect.

Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas tells the story of an autonomous community near Tijuana and its struggle to carve out space for survival and thriving in the shadows of the U.S.-Mexico geopolitical border. Through women’s active participation and leadership, a women’s political subjectivity has emerged—Maclovianas. These border women both contest and invoke their citizenship as they struggle to have their land rights recognized, and they transform traditional political roles into that of agency and responsibility.

Téllez, an associate professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona, writes about transnational community formations, Chicana feminism, and gendered migration.

Listen to the interview here.

Got ‘Hatak Witches’? Louise Erdrich Thinks You Should

Posted on November 22, 2021November 21, 2021 by Mari Herreras

Nov. 22, 2021

At the end of Louise Erdrich’s newest novel, The Sentence, is a page titled “Totally Biased List of Tookie’s Favorite Books.” Under the subtitle, “Ghost-Managing Book List,” are 15 books, and between Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto, and Beloved, by Tony Morrison is Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah.

Author shout outs to one another isn’t unusual, but that doesn’t mean this particular shoutout doesn’t need a bit of celebrating and thanks.

The Hatak Witches, published by the University of Arizona Press, follows Detective Monique Blue Hawk and her partner Chris Pierson into an investigate which begins with a security guard found dead and another wounded at the Children’s Museum of Science and History in Norman, Oklahoma. There are no fingerprints, no footprints, and no obvious means to enter the locked building. Blue Hawk, however, discovers that a portion of an ancient and deformed skeleton has also been stolen from the neglected museum archives. As this thriller unfolds, readers are introduced to Choctaw cosmology with the unexpected appearance and power of the Old Ones who guard the lands of the Choctaw afterlife.

The list of books in Erdrich’s novel isn’t the only nod of appreciation for Hatak Witches. In a recent interview on National Public Radio’s Here and Now, Erdrich refers to Mihesuah’s novel as “a compelling read.” Go here for listen, and head to minute 19:00 for Erdrich’s shoutout.

Thanks for the shoutout and the love! Erdrich, while a celebrate Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is co-owner of Birchbark Books, a Minneapolis-based independent bookstore that supports Indigenous authors and their books. During the pandemic, Birchbark helped us as a sponsor of several of our virtual events celebrating books from our Sun Tracks series, including The Hatak Witches. Thank you for the continued support!

Detective Blue Hawk recently received more adoration in The Arizona Daily Star, which included The Hatak Witches in a list of book recommendations from our friends at the Pima County Public Library of science fiction, fantasy, an horror books by Indigenous authors. Read the list here. An art blog, Sidetracks and Detours also included the book in a list of recommendations of book by Indigenous authors. That list is here.

‘Beyond Earth’s Edge’ Co-Editor Makes Pitch for Space Mission Laureates

Posted on November 10, 2021November 8, 2021 by Mari Herreras

November 10, 2021

Poet and space lover Christopher Cokinos recently made a pitch for the creation of Mission Laureates, artists in all areas that would be part of the public engagement process with all space missions.

Here’s an excerpt of the pitch from the co-author of Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, an anthology of poetry that spans from the dawn of the space age to the imagined futures of the universe:

The arts have long been engaged with the night sky, astronomy, and, more recently, with space programs. Consider, in the latter case, NASA’s famed fine arts program that placed painters and illustrators such as Norman Rockwell and Robert Rauschenberg in the middle of launch facilities, training centers and recovery zones. There is a long tradition of “space art,” first popularized by Chesley Bonestell. Fine arts photographers, such as Michael Light, have given their craft over to space imagery. Many writers have turned their attention to space; in the modern era, consider Oriana Fallaci or Margaret Lazarus Dean. As co-editor of Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, I know that poets have responded vigorously—if not always enthusiastically—to the Space Age.

A fine overview of NASA, ESA, and the visual arts can be found in Dr. William A. Bezouska’s paper for The Aerospace Corporation, Space and Art: Connecting Two Creative Endeavors. His focus, as has been the focus of most art-space ventures, is strictly with the visual, from Apollo 15’s Fallen Astronaut memorial to various imagery, from large installation work to film, from classroom displays to art contests. And, of course, we await the possibility of the SpaceX dearMoon mission, in which artists will be billionaire-curated for a lunar orbital flight.

Yet other arts have gotten the short shrift: ceramicists, say, or modern dancers or textile artists. Or, in my case, poetry, though listing the number of real and fictional aerospace figures who have called on poets to be launched in space would take some time. (It’s interesting to note that at least two astronauts have come back from space to write poetry, Story Musgrave and Alfred Worden, both of whom are represented in Beyond Earth’s Edge.)

To read Cokinos’s entire pitch, visit here.

William Sheehan Talks ‘Discovering Mars’ with OLLI Members

Posted on November 9, 2021November 8, 2021 by Mari Herreras

November 9, 2021

In a recent virtual presentation for the University of Arizona’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Discovering Mars: A History of Observation and Exploration of the Red Planet co-author William Sheehan discussed this new book from the University of Arizona Press that vividly conveys the way our understanding of this other planet has grown from earliest times to the present.

The story is epic in scope — an Iliad or Odyssey for our time, at least so far largely without the folly, greed, lust, and tragedy of those ancient stories. Instead, the narrative of our quest for the Red Planet has showcased some of our species’ most hopeful attributes: curiosity, cooperation, exploration, and the restless drive to understand our place in the larger universe.

Message from Miriam Davidson’s ‘Beloved Border’ Reaches Op-Ed Pages

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Mari Herreras

November 8, 2021

The Progressive Magazine recently published an editorial by Miriam Davidson, author of Beloved Border: Humanity and Hope in a Contested Land, examining the latest statistics on border life and policy with a reminder that the problems can be resolved with “radical rethinking and deep, consistent attention.”

Davidson’s new book, published by the University of Arizona Press, shares the history of sanctuary and argues that this social movement and others that have originated on the border are vanguards of larger global movements against the mistreatment of migrant workers and refugees, police brutality, and other abuses of human and natural rights. Davidson gives concrete examples of positive ways in which border people are promoting local culture and cross-border solidarity through health care, commerce, food, art, and music. While death and suffering continue to occur, the book shows us how the U.S.-Mexico border could be, and in many ways already is, a model for peaceful coexistence worldwide.

Here’s an excerpt from the editorial:

In September, we all saw the pictures of mounted patrolmen maneuvering their horses and long reins in an attempt to corral Haitian migrants along the Texas border. These photos evoked the ugliness of 19th century “slave patrols” in the United States, as well as the enslavement of Haitians under French colonial rule in the 18th century.

Less well known is that, so far this year, at least 190 sets of human remains have been found in Arizona’s deserts. Forty-three were found in June, the highest one-month total since July 2010. More than half of the remains were discovered within one week of death—16 were located within one day. Migrants have also died while trying to cross the Rio Grande, including a nine-year-old girl in March.

To read the entire editorial, go here. The editorial was picked up by The Miami Herald.

The University of Arizona Press