Category: Media

Buzzfeed News Puts ‘A Good Map’ on Books to Read List

Posted on November 11, 2020November 9, 2020 by Mari Herreras

November 11, 2020

BuzzFeed News featured A Good Map of All Things, the new novel by Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Álvaro Ríos on a good reads recommendation list of 15 smaller presses.

From 15 Books From Smaller Presses You Won’t Be Able To Put Down:

A Good Map of All Things by Alberto Álvaro Ríos (University of Arizona Press, out now)

Billed as a “picaresque” novel — a style that typically follows a rogue or antihero and often has some elements of satire — A Good Map is set in the borderlands of Arizona and Sonora. The people in this fictional, small Mexican town are incorrigible gossips, true believers, and utterly charming. This is a book that feels like a classic, with characters who feel like family.

Read the list here.

PBS’ The Open Mind Features ‘Beyond Earth’s Edge’ Co-Editors

Posted on November 9, 2020 by Mari Herreras

November 9, 2020

A recent episode of the PBS’ The Open Mind featured Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight‘s co-editors Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos talking about the new poetry anthology and this celebration of poetics and the space sciences.

Hosted by Alexander Heffner, The Open Mind is a series that explores national interests in politics, media, technology, the arts and civic life.

Beyond Earth’s Edge is an anthology that spans from the dawn of the space age to the imagined futures of the universe. The anthology offers a fascinating record of both national mindsets and private perspectives as poets grapple with the promise and peril of U.S. space exploration across decades and into the present.

Radio Survivor Podcast Features ‘Mexican Waves’ Author Sonia Robles

Posted on November 6, 2020November 4, 2020 by Mari Herreras

November 6, 2020

Radio Survivor celebrated border radio in a recent podcast with Sonia Robles, author of Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting Along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950.

From the podcast:

Border radio is one of our favorite topics at Radio Survivor and on this week’s episode we dig into the history of radio broadcasting on the northern border of Mexico. Scholar Sonia Robles shares the stories of some of the lesser-known, small broadcasters whose histories are often overshadowed by the wild tales of higher power border blaster stations.

Listen to the interview.

Latinx Talk Interviews ‘Voices from the Ancestors’ Co-editor Lara Medina

Posted on November 5, 2020November 4, 2020 by Mari Herreras

November 5, 2020

In a recent interview on Latinx Talk, Lara Medina, co-editor of Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices, talks about her own spiritual journal and current trends in Latinx studies.

From the interview:

“The knowledges in this book come from deep places in our hearts, bodies, and minds and is intended for personal, familial, and community well-being. The writings reflect wisdom passed on through the oral tradition and lived experiences, research applied to our lives, or from our own intuitive creativity. As we learn from each other in a variety of ways, we have gathered reflections and practices in the form of short essays, poetry, visual art, ritual guidelines, and songs. It is wisdom based on the ancient knowledge received from Indigenous and African ancestors who understood their interconnectedness with one another and all life forms, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic forces. We and the contributors to this volume believe that it is time our cultural capital be documented and shared as we carry medicine in reclaiming ancestral teachings, in rethinking imposed religious beliefs, and in learning from diverse spiritual traditions.”

Read the full interview.

Ready to Take Your Own Space Poetry Journey?

Posted on November 4, 2020November 4, 2020 by Mari Herreras

November 4, 2020

What can poetry teach us about science? Inspired by this question five years ago, Julie Swarstad Johnson embarked on a journey that celebrated spaceflight and poetry at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. In September 2016 Swarstad Johnson, a librarian at the renowned poetry center, organized an exhibit aptly titled “The Poetry of Spaceflight.”

That exhibit inspired the new poetry anthology co-edited by Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos, Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight. Recently, Swarstad Johnson recalled the inspiration for the exhibit and the book on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog 1508. She also provides ideas for writing your own poems inspired by spaceflight.

Read Swarstad Johnson’s post and writing prompts.

Beyond Earth’s Edge Inspires a Celebrity Space Poetry Jam

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Mari Herreras

October 29, 2020

If your deep Start Trek nerdom had you fantasizing about the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager reading you some Pablo Neruda, you can thank Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight.

The poetry anthology, recently published by the University of Arizona Press, was featured on Planetary Radio, the Planetary Society’s weekly podcast brilliantly hosted by Mat Kaplan.

Beyond’s editors Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos joined the podcast in what was truly a space-nerd delight with Picardo, of Star Trek: Voyager fame and a Planetary Society board member, reading a Pablo Neruda poem, as well as Bill Nye, Sasha Sagan, astronauts Nicole Stott and Leland Melvin, and others, all reading poems featured in the anthology celebrating poetry and outer space.

Listen to the podcast here, and revel further in the podcast and anthology getting some love from Daily Star Trek News–yes, Beyond Earth’s Edge is on the Federation’s radar! Read about it here. ?

‘Beyond Earth’s Edge’ Co-Editor Celebrates Cosmic Life in LA Times’ Op-Ed

Posted on October 20, 2020October 16, 2020 by Mari Herreras

October 20, 2020

Christopher Cokinos, co-editor of Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, reveled in science’s recent discovered of phospine in the clouds of Venus, a sign that may signal life in a recent Op-Ed published by the Los Angeles Times.

From the op-ed:

“It means that life arose more than once in our backwater solar system. It means that life is common, and its tenacity is cosmic. For me, that puts our struggles in a grand context. Not by way of diminishing the hard work of problem-solving that faces us. Rather, the possibility that swaths of airborne microbes are going about their business in the skies above Venus reminds me that life finds a way. We can find our way too.”

Read the entire op-ed here.

Beyond Earth’s Edge, co-edited by Cokinos and Julie Swarstad Johnson (Editor), Christopher Cokinos, is a trailblazing anthology of poetry that spans from the dawn of the space age to the imagined futures of the universe. The anthology offers a fascinating record of both national mindsets and private perspectives as poets grapple with the promise and peril of U.S. space exploration across decades and into the present.

Anne García-Romero Featured on New Books Network Podcast

Posted on September 15, 2020September 16, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

September 15, 2020

University of Arizona Press author Anne García-Romero was featured on a recent episode of the New Books Network podcast for her book, The Fornes Frame.

“In The Fornes Frame: Contemporary Latina Playwrights and the Legacy of Maria Irene Fornes (University of Arizona Press, 2016) playwright and theatre scholar Anne García-Romero traces the career and legacy of Maria Irene Fornes.

Fornes was one of the most significant American playwrights of the twentieth century, and her legacy is evident in the dozens of playwrights she mentored over the course of her long career. García-Romero shows how her unique pedagogy and her example as a successful Latina experimental playwright continue to inspire playwrights like Caridad Svich, Cusi Cram, Elaine Romero, Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Karen Zacarías.”

Listen to the podcast and read more here.

Frederick Luis Aldama Featured on New Books Network Podcast

Posted on September 15, 2020September 16, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

September 15, 2020

University of Arizona Press author Frederick Luis Aldama was featured on a recent episode of the New Books Network podcast to discuss his new volume, which he co-edited with Arturo J. Aldama, Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities.

“In this episode we sit down with Frederick Luis Aldama, Distinguished University Professor at the Ohio State University and co-editor of Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities (University of Arizona Press), to discuss some of the cutting-edge research in this new edited volume.

This rich collection of work from eighteen contributors approaches the topic of masculinities from a diversity of perspectives and methodologies. With special emphasis on the plurality of Latinx masculinities, the essays reveal the divergent manifestations of masculinity across a broad spectrum including politics, social movements, literature, media, popular culture, personal experience, and other analytical angles. The pernicious effect of stereotypes and toxic Latinx masculinity is laid bare throughout the text in chapters that challenge the derogatory performances and reification of machismo in mainstream U.S. culture and society.”

Listen to the podcast and read more here.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa Reads Uncollected and Unpublished Poems in 1991 Recording

Posted on August 19, 2020August 17, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

August 14, 2020

We are so thrilled to share a new volume with you, Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldúa, this season! We thought this reading from Gloria herself was incredible, so we wanted to share it with you. This reading is available thanks to voca, the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s online audiovisual archive of more than 1,000 recordings of poets reading their work during visits to the Center between 1963 and today. Listen here.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa—theorist, Chicana, feminist—famously called on scholars to do work that matters. This pronouncement was a rallying call, inspiring scholars across disciplines to become scholar-activists and to channel their intellectual energy and labor toward the betterment of society. Scholars and activists alike have encountered and expanded on these pathbreaking theories and concepts first introduced by Anzaldúa in Borderlands/La frontera and other texts.

Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldúa is a pragmatic and inspiring offering of how to apply Anzaldúa’s ideas to the classroom and in the community rather than simply discussing them as theory. The book gathers nineteen essays by scholars, activists, teachers, and professors who share how their first-hand use of Anzaldúa’s theories in their classrooms and community environments.

The University of Arizona Press