Category: Author news

Writing Westward Podcast Interviews Andrew Curley

Posted on by Anissa Suazo

April 25, 2024

Writing Westward podcast host, Brenden W. Rensink, interviewed Andrew Curley, author of Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation. Curley is a member of the Navajo Nation and an assistant professor in the School of Geography, Development & Environment at the University of Arizona.

During the interview, Curley said:

If we think about coal as not just an existential environmental question, but as a commodity that’s produced, what do we find through that analytical entry point? That’s where we find the consumers of this, the utilities and their constituents–ratepayers or state corporate commissions–all those entities and people who structure and limit what is possible, even in terms of energy production for tribes.

Listen to the full interview here.

About the book:

For almost fifty years, coal dominated the Navajo economy. But in 2019 one of the Navajo Nation’s largest coal plants closed.

This comprehensive new work offers a deep dive into the complex inner workings of energy shift in the Navajo Nation. Geographer Andrew Curley, a member of the Navajo Nation, examines the history of coal development within the Navajo Nation, including why some Diné supported coal and the consequences of doing so. He explains the Navajo Nation’s strategic choices to use the coal industry to support its sovereignty as a path forward in the face of ongoing colonialism. Carbon Sovereignty demonstrates the mechanism of capitalism through colonialism and the construction of resource sovereignty, in both the Navajo Nation’s embrace and its rejection of a coal economy.

John P. Schaefer to Bring “Desert Jewels” to Downtown Tucson

Posted on by maryreynolds

April 23, 2024

The Southern Arizona Heritage & Visitor Center will host renowned Tucson photographer, author, and University of Arizona President Emeritus John P. Schaefer for a book signing. He will sign his book, Desert Jewels: Cactus Flowers of the Southwest and Mexico on May 14, at 11 a.m., at the Visitor Center in the Historic Pima County Courthouse, 115 N Church Ave., in downtown Tucson.

Cactus flowers are jewels of the desert—they add brilliant pops of color to our arid surroundings. In Desert Jewels, photographer Schaefer brings the exquisite and unexpected beauty of the cactus flower to the page. Hundreds of close-up photographs of cactus flowers native to the U.S. Southwest and Mexico offer a visual feast of color and texture, nuance and light.

These stunning photographs allow us to appreciate the spectacular range of color and form cactus flowers have to offer. The book offers a glimpse into Schaefer’s process for capturing these elusive desert gems. His beautiful photographs were featured as a book of stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

About the author
John P. Schaefer had an active twenty-one-year career in teaching and research at the University of Arizona. A conservationist and avid birdwatcher, he helped organize the Tucson Audubon Society and founded the Nature Conservancy in Arizona. In addition to his academic and conservation work, Dr. Schaefer is a skilled photographer and author of several books on photography, including A Desert Illuminated: Cactus Flowers of the Sonoran Desert. He and Ansel Adams founded the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 1975.

Arizona KJZZ Interviews Anthony Macías

Posted on by Anissa Suazo

April 12, 2024

Anthony Macías was interviewed by Arizona’s KJZZ radio station about his book Chicano-Chicana Americana. Macías is a scholar of twentieth-century cultural history and a professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. Read the full interview here.

In the interview, Macías said, “These bit part actors that steal their scenes and manage to carve out some kind of success. I try to convey to a general audience the cultural studies notion that that representation matters, that how you see people and how you perceive them, impacts the way that you treat them and and their chances for upper mobility in the American dream.”

About the book:

Chicano-Chicana Americana is a cultural history of Mexican Americans in film, television, and theater. Through biographical sketches of performers such as Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Robert Beltran, and Lupe Ontiveros, this work asserts Mexican Americans’ proper place in the national narratives of our collective imaginary. Conveying a multicentered, polycultural America, this book shows us intriguing performers in bit parts who steal the scene and redefine what it means to be American.

LA Times Festival of Books Features Pelaez Lopez and Báez

Posted on by maryreynolds

April 3, 2024

Editor Alan Pelaez Lopez and Poet Diego Báez will be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday, April 21. Pelaez Lopez, editor of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, will speak on “Everything Latinidad: Challenging the Myth of the Monolith.” They will speak on the Latinidad Stage, 4:00 – 4:40 p.m. Báez will read from his latest collection, Yaguareté White, on the Poetry Stage, 2:20 – 2:40 p.m. All festival events take place on the University of Southern California campus.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has evolved to include live bands, poetry readings, film screenings and artists creating their work on-site. All outdoor events, including those with Pelaez Lopez and Báez, are free to attend. Indoor panels require a small fee for advance reservations. Discover all the 2024 Festival participants.

Congratulations to Alan and Diego!

About When Language Broke Open:

When Language Broke Open collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community.

By exploring themes of memory, care, and futurity, these contributions expand understandings of Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their U.S.-based diasporas.

About Yaguareté White:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

CALÓ News Interviews Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda

Posted on by maryreynolds

March 28, 2024

In advance of the April 7 Los Angeles book launch party for Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis, Denise Florez of CALÓ News interviewed editors Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda.

In the article, Fe Montes said, “We see art as a tool for education, empowerment and transformation. And so we could educate about a holiday or community event or historical event in a poem.” She further explained that Mujeres de Maiz will also hold poetry processions in the streets, in an auto repair store or a nail salon. She said: “We walk along the south side of César Chávez Boulevard and do that. So bringing it to not only the cultural centers, but literally to the people or to high school assemblies in the schools.”

Nadia Zepeda said, “I really see the importance of documenting our movements and documenting the work that has been done in Los Angeles and surrounding cities. I came to the work around wellness and connections to ancestral indigenous knowledge.”

Read the full interview here.

About the book:

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, this collection weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.

MdM’s political-ethical-spiritual commitments, cultural production, and everyday practices are informed by Indigenous and transnational feminist of color artistic, ceremonial, activist, and intellectual legacies. Contributors fuse stories of celebration, love, and spirit-work with an incisive critique of interlocking oppressions, both intimate and structural, encouraging movement toward “a world where many worlds fit.”

Author Ken Lamberton Wins Fellowship

Posted on by maryreynolds

March 1, 2024

Ken Lamberton is one of the first recipients of the new Writing Freedom Fellowship. He is the author of several works, including Chasing Arizona, Dry River, and Time of Grace.

Haymarket Books and the Mellon Foundation jointly announced the inaugural cohort for the newly established Writing Freedom Fellowship—a program to support writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction impacted by the criminal legal system. Writing Freedom was envisioned and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Art for Justice Fund, and developed and administered by Haymarket Books.

“This exceptional group of Fellows further reveals the profound literary achievement and vital perspectives of those who have been touched by our country’s carceral system,” said Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander. “We at Mellon are honored to join Haymarket in driving connection among these voices, galvanizing them in their advocacy, craft, and future work.”

Congratulations Ken!

Read more about the program and see the complete list of 2024 Fellows here.

About the books:

Chasing Arizona takes readers on a yearlong, twenty-thousand-mile joy ride across Arizona during its centennial, racking up more than two hundred points of interest along the way. This book is an adventure story, a tale of Arizona, and a celebration of what makes the state a great place to visit and live. In Dry River, Lamberton takes us on a trek across the land of three nations—the United States, Mexico, and the Tohono O’odham Nation—as he hikes the river’s path from its source and introduces us to people who draw identity from the river—dedicated professionals, hardworking locals, and the author’s own family. Far more than a “prison memoir,” Time of Grace is an intimate and revealing look at relationships—with fellow humans and with the surprising wildlife of the Sonoran Desert, both inside and beyond prison walls.

William L. Bird, Jr. on New Books Network

Posted on by maryreynolds

February 29, 2024

New Books Network “American West” podcast host Daniel Moran interviewed William L. Bird, Jr., author of In the Arms of Saguaros. An essential—and monumental—member of the Sonoran Desert ecosystem, the saguaro cactus has become the quintessential icon of the American West. Bird talks about the “social saguaro.” He explains how, from the botanical explorers of the nineteenth century to the tourism boosters in our own time, saguaros and their images have fulfilled attention-getting needs and expectations. Listen to the podcast on New Books Network, or find on Apple or Spotify.

About the book:

Through text and lavish images, this work explores the saguaro’s growth into a western icon from the early days of the American railroad to the years bracketing World War II, when Sun Belt boosterism hit its zenith and proponents of tourism succeed in moving the saguaro to the center of the promotional frame. This book explores how the growth of tourism brought the saguaro to ever-larger audiences through the proliferation of western-themed imagery on the American roadside. The history of the saguaro’s popular and highly imaginative range points to the current moment in which the saguaro touches us as a global icon in art, fashion, and entertainment.

Diego Báez Interview in Chicago Review of Books

Posted on by maryreynolds

February 26, 2024

Mananda Chaffa recently interviewed poet Diego Báez, author of Yaguareté White, in an article titled, “A Welcome Displacement: Diego Báez On Memory, Language and Belonging,” in the Chicago Review of Books. The interview delves into his poetry’s complex issues of colonialism, language, culture and identity, as well as familial intimacies related to his young daughter.

In the interview, Báez talks about getting comfortable with unfamiliar language:

The speaker of “Yaguareté White” surely knows more Guaraní than most readers (an admittedly low bar to clear). I thought it would be interesting to open with a speaker who seeks to reassure readers, or who positions himself as sympathetic to readerly frustrations with pronunciation and interpretation, only to subvert that originally accommodating tone in later poems, almost to the point of sharpness or hostility. I’m interested in the ways poetic speakers contradict, undermine, or unsettle their own positions. That aspect of the human condition is just so much more relatable to me.

Read the complete interview here.

About the book:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar.

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

February 23, 2024

The Wall Street Journal featured Woven from the Center: Native Basketry in the Southwest, by Diane Dittemore. Reporter Peter Saenger wrote about how the book relates to the Arizona State Museum’s permanent exhibit, Woven Through Time: American Treasures of Native Basketry and Fiber Art: “Diane D. Dittemore uses the baskets to illustrate an encyclopedic survey of Native American basketry in the U.S. Southwest. The earliest North American baskets are almost 10,000 years old, and basketry often features in Native lore.” Dittemore is the Associate Curator of Ethnological Collections at the Arizona State Museum, located at the University of Arizona. 

About the book:
Woven from the Center presents breathtaking basketry from some of the greatest weavers in the Southwest. Each sandal and mat fragment, each bowl and jar, every water bottle and whimsy is infused with layers of aesthetic, cultural, and historical meanings. This book offers stunning photos and descriptions of woven works from Tohono O’odham, Akimel O’odham, Hopi, Western Apache, Yavapai, Navajo, Pai, Paiute, New Mexico Pueblo, Eastern Apache, Seri, Yaqui, Mayo, and Tarahumara communities.

This richly illustrated volume stands on its own as a definitive look at basketry of the Greater Southwest, including northern Mexico.

“Yaguareté White” Playlist

Posted on by maryreynolds

February 21, 2024

What do Raffi and Pharrell Williams have in common? They’re both on Poet Diego Báez’s Spotify playlist for his collection Yaguareté White!

Báez introduces his musical influences:

Growing up in Bnorm, IL, two genres dominated our household boombox: Christian rock and Paraguayan folk. Also, Kenny G. (Mom was a fan.) The arpa and accordion of polka paraguaya spun almost exclusively on bootleg CDs burned and returned undeclared on flights back from Asunción. Occasionally, cassettes.

Yaguareté White came together, slowly, over the course of 15 years. But the book’s narratives, images, and fables stretch back to my earliest memories: Curled up on the floor of a jet over the Amazon, en route to São Paulo or Buenos Aires, before that fourth and final airborne leg to my father’s home country.

Go to the Largehearted Boy Book Notes series to read more; listen to the music here.

About the book:

In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar.

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

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