Category: Media

Poetry Magazine: The Unsung Passion of Ray Gonzalez

Posted on December 8, 2017December 7, 2017 by Rose Brandt

December 8, 2017

This month, Poetry Magazine featured a touching guest post from Roy G. Guzmán, who took the opportunity to celebrate the immense literary contributions and impact of Camino del Sol poet Ray Gonzalez:

Through Gonzalez’s poetry I’ve discovered the various syntaxes that run through my own linguistic DNA. Through him I’ve discovered how to deploy my metaphors and when to reveal my silences (“Beware the silence stronger than the voice,” he writes in “Beware the Silence,” included in Human Crying Daisies (2003)). Like his personality—measured, as if ticking like a clock, and with an appetite for tactful wit—Gonzalez’s poem-tellers can be shy but, when allowed to speak, can verbalize truths with the swiftness of a lizard. In “What Lesson?” for instance, the speaker asks, “What were the questions our mothers asked? Who did they make love to before our fathers arrived with newspapers and torn wills and deeds?” Gonzalez has the associative skill and patience of James Wright, and that gift of surprise you find in Russell Edson’s best work. He knows when to walk into a poem and when to walk away, leaving everything around haunted.

Read the full feature on Poetry Magazine.

Tucson Weekly: A Conversation with Tucson Author Tom Miller

Posted on December 4, 2017July 20, 2018 by Rose Brandt

December 4, 2017

In case you missed it, an excerpt from Tom Miller’s Cuba, Hot and Cold donned the cover of the Tucson Weekly this past week. The feature story was accompanied by a Q&A between Tucson Weekly Managing Editor Jim Nintzel and Tom Miller, in which nothing was off the table. The two discussed how the CIA recruited Miller for a spy, his work in the underground press, and being subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury for some of his work:

Cuba, Hot and Coldis an intimate look at Cuba and the people who live there. What do you hope people take away from this book?

When the U.S. and Cuba finally came to their senses and established this sort of detante, everybody said: “I gotta get there. I gotta get there before it changes. What I want them to take from the book is: You don’t have to get there before it changes. It’s gonna keep changing for the next five, 10, 20, 30 years. When people say they want to get there before it changes, they’re really saying they want to get there before McDonald’s gets there. But the changes have already taken place, and they’re going to continue to take place. I think that people who are so eager to get there are making a mistake. They can take their time and read up on it and enjoy it when they go.

You’ve been traveling to Cuba for 30 years now—what first drew you there?

It was partly political and partly journalistic. The journalistic part was that Cuba was and still is the best story in the Americas. And also political: I was part of the anti-war movement, and we would read underground newspapers not just from around the United States, but we would read Gramma, which was the communist party newspaper in Cuba. It was a terrible newspaper. It still is; it is an awful newspaper. But it tells you what is going on there. It tells you who is in charge and what their politics are. And in the anti-war movement, there was always a spot for Cuba at the table. It was at the far end of the table, but there was a spot for Cuba at the table. And because of the taboo, because of the embargo, it became more and more tempting to go.

Read the full feature Q&A and an excerpt of the book on the Tucson Weekly.

New York Times: Already My Lips Were Luminous

Posted on November 19, 2017November 22, 2017 by Rose Brandt

November 19, 2017

Terrance Hayes, current poetry editor for New York Times Magazine, selected Vickie Vértiz’s poem “Already My Lips Were Luminous” from her debut poetry collection Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut for the featured poem in this Sunday’s issue.

“I do not know the language of that place” underscores this poem’s striking balance of ambiguity and mystery. Much is said in the white spaces, caesuras, breaks. The unpunctuated five lines of the first stanza unspool suggestively creepily. The hands in car guts have a visceral intensity. The halting final couplet prompts a pause, a silence, a reread.

Read the full feature on the New York Times.

High Country News: Map of Language Charted by Diné Philosophy

Posted on November 13, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

November 13, 2017

High Country News caught up with Esther Belin just outside of her office at the Peaceful Spirit Treatment Center on the Southern Ute Reservation to discuss her latest book Of Cartography:

Her new book, Of Cartography, is framed by the four cardinal directions and their symbolism in Navajo history. It digs into the cultural and physical representation of Navajo language, how landscape shapes identity and what it means to be Indian.

Her poems try to capture the rhythm and storytelling intrinsic to the Diné language. “I wanted to investigate whether there was a Navajo meter or diction, and how that voice could come out,” she says. “It’s not just a collection of poems squeezed together. This was about pairing identity politics with Navajo philosophy, which is all very orderly, and then telling my story through the structure.”

Read the full feature interview on High Country News.

Arizona Daily Star: Tom Miller Shows Us a Side of Cuba Tourists Rarely See

Posted on November 12, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

November 12, 2017

Following the release event for Tom Miller’s Cuba, Hot and Cold, the Arizona Daily Star honored the Tucson travel writer by running an excerpt of his piece “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop:”

Tucsonan Tom Miller first visited Cuba 30 years ago. He has returned often, writing about a Cuba most don’t get to see. His books include “Trading with the Enemy” and “Revenge of the Saguaro.” This is an excerpt from his latest, “Cuba, Hot and Cold:”

José Martí, leader of Cuba’s nineteenth-century independence movement, is said to have had a voice that sounded like an oboe. Perhaps that’s why the country has so many oboe players. I took oboe lessons in Havana when I lived there in the early 1990s and wrote about them at the time. I was hoping to improve my mediocre oboe skills acquired during junior high school, and frankly, I wanted to show readers that contemporary music in Cuba was more than just salsa and reggaeton. I succeeded with the latter, but far less with improving my ability. I even had trouble with the ducks in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. And so I put my oboe on the top shelf in my Arizona office where it gathered desert dust. I’d glance up at it now and then with a sense of forlorn pride, reassuring myself that I owned a quality instrument that I once played with some gusto.

Read the full excerpt on the Arizona Daily Star.

Frederick Luis Aldama in conversation with Daniel Olivas

Posted on October 21, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

October 21, 2017

This week, Frederick Luis Aldama and Daniel Olivas, two of our very own Camino del Sol authors, came together to discuss matters of content and form in writing fictional borderlands. The conversation between the two prolific writers was the cover feature on Latin@ Literatures.

Established in the summer of 2016, Latin@ Literatures is an online source for contemporary discussion on Latina/o literature and culture seeking to provide a space for philosophical engagement in topics dealing with Latina/o culture.

An expert on Latinx popular culture, Frederick Luis Aldama is the author, co-author, and editor of twenty-nine books, including Long Stories Cut Short and, most recently, Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics. Aldama interviewed Olivas about the power of the written word in Latinx communities and his new collection of short stories The King of Lighting Fixtures:

FLA: Daniel, you are author and editor of numerous books and now you have a near simultaneous publication of your book of poetry, Crossing the Border (Pact Press) and a book of short fiction, The King of Lighting Fixtures (Camino del Sol). You are also a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books and work as a lawyer for the California Department of Justice in the Public Rights Division. What’s your secret?

DO: I don’t golf. And I’m a compulsive writer and editor. Perhaps it’s a disease.

FLA: You also edit La Bloga.

DO: Ah, but I share blogging duties with about a dozen wonderful writers.

FLA: While you studied literature at Stanford, you are largely self-taught as a creative writer.

DO: I refused to take creative writing classes while in college because I thought it’d be a frivolous thing to do. Little did I know that I’d embark on a writing career in middle age. But I’m happy I took the route I did. I enjoy being a lawyer, especially in serving the people of California.

Read the full Q&A feature on Latin@ Literatures.

Ohio State Professor Hopes to Inspire Diversity in Comic Movies

Posted on October 20, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

October 20, 2017

Bringing pop culture into the classroom, Frederick Luis Aldama, or as he has become known “Professor LatinX,” recently caught the attention of ABC’s Columbus news affiliate WSYX/WTTE. Camera crews joined Aldama at Ohio State University to see how he incorporates comic books into his curriculum and discuss his new book Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics.

An Ohio State professor is designing a class around comic books.

While doing that, Frederick Luis Aldama is looking at why one demographic seems under-represented when the books are made into movies.

His latest book, “LatinX Superheroes in Mainstream Comics” explores the absence of Latino characters in comic book movies.

Watch the interview on Columbus, Ohio’s ABC 6.

Daniel A. Olivas Speaks with LA Times’s Agatha French

Posted on October 18, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

A second-generation Angeleno, Daniel Olivas practices law with the California Department of Justice in addition to being a prolific writer, book critic, and avid supporter of the Latinx literary community. Recently he talked with Agatha French, staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, about straddling two professions and his new book The King of Lighting Fixtures.

Daniel A. Olivas’ latest collection of short stories, “The King of Lighting Fixtures,” (University of Arizona Press, $16.95) opens with a character settling into his office at the Public Rights Division of the California Department of Justice. It’s a detail from which readers can expect a certain level of authenticity: Olivas, in addition to being the author of nine books, is an attorney there. (Public access to Malibu’s Carbon Beach? Olivas is, in part, to thank.)

“The King of Lighting Fixtures,” includes flash fiction, speculative fiction, magical realism and more traditional stories; what unites the work is a sense of place. Olivas is an L.A. writer, and he roots his work in L.A.

I spoke to Olivas over the phone about straddling two professions; being a longtime contributor to La Bloga, a website that showcases Latina/Latino literature and culture; and writing the final, dystopian story of his book.

Read the full Q&A feature in the Los Angeles Times.

Will the California Forest Fires Change Anything?

Posted on October 16, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

October 16, 2017

As we’ve all been consumed by the startling wildfires in California, the UA Press’s resident forest fire expert Stephen Pyne has been the man on-call for reporters on the ground. The author of the definitive history of American wildfires and the Press’s To The Last Smoke series, a multivolume series describing the nation’s fire scene region by region, Pyne provides a historical and administrative context for the devastation in California in a recent editorial picked up by Newsweek.

The fires that have blitzed across Napa-Sonoma have a claim on the rest of us because they are tragic, because they will require emergency assistance, and because what happens in California tends not to stay in California.

Most of California is built to burn: it has fires to match its mountains.

Unsurprisingly, fire protection as a formal program came early—a Board of Forestry in 1885; national forests in the 1890s; national parks in the Sierra Nevada under administration by the U.S. Cavalry.

In 1905 the U.S. Forest Service assumed control over the national forests and California passed a Forest Protection Act, leading to an ad hoc condominium that fused into a formal alliance with the 1911 Weeks Act.

Read Pyne’s full feature in Newsweek.

Esther Belin on Her Long-Awaited Second Collection

Posted on October 12, 2017November 16, 2017 by Rose Brandt

October 12, 2017

In anticipation for her upcoming book launch event at Maria’s Bookshop, Esther Belin sat down with The Durango Herald‘s Arts Editor Katie Chicklinkski-Cahill to discuss her sophomore poetry collection Of Cartography.

For Bayfield writer and artist Esther Belin, her new book of poems, Of Cartography, was a long time coming.

Belin, whose 1999 book From the Belly of My Beauty won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, will be reading from and talking about her new book on Thursday at Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave.

Q: Tell me about Of Cartography – how long did it take to write?

A: I wrote it a long time ago. It took about seven years to edit. (Laughs) And part of it was just honestly finding the time: I have four kids and for me, it was primarily my focus, and I was working, so it was really hard to figure that out. It was … probably last summer is when I just took the time and said, “I need to finish this.”

Read the full Q&A feature on The Durango Herald.

The University of Arizona Press