Event Category: Book Release Celebration

Octavio Quintanilla Book Launch in San Antonio

Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025

Time: 7 p.m., CST

Where: UNAM San Antonio, 600 Hemisfair Plaza Way, San Antonio, TX

Octavio Quintanilla, author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, celebrates his book launch at UNAM San Antonio. His book is the winner of the Ambroggio Prize from The Academy of American Poets. Quintanilla will be joined by special guest poets Natalia Trevino and Alfredo Avalos.

Quintanilla served as the 2018–2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Texas. He is the recipient of the Nebrija Creadores Scholarship, which allowed him a month-long residency at the Instituto Franklin at Alcalá University in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. Octavio is the founder and director of the Literature and Arts Festival and VersoFrontera and the founder and publisher of Alabrava Press. He teaches literature and creative writing in the MA/MFA program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.

About the book:

Presented in Spanish with English translations, this poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. From the opening poem to the last in the first section, Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing.

Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours is more than just an exercise in poetic virtuosity; it is an excavation into the complexities of what it means to be a human being in our contemporary world.

Meena Khandelwal at Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City

Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Time: 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., CST

Where: Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

Meena Khandelwal will talk about her new book, Cookstove Chronicles : Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India, at the Book Matters event at Prairie Lights Books. Elana Buch, associate professor of anthropology, will join anthropologists Brady G’sell and Khandelwal for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Light refreshments will follow. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP here.

About the book:

Stove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves when they have other options?

Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles argues that the supposedly obsolete chulha persists because it offers women control over the tools needed to feed their families. Their continued use of old stoves alongside the new is not a failure to embrace new technologies but instead a strategy to maximize flexibility and autonomy. The chulha is neither the villain nor hero of this story. It produces particulate matter that harms people’s bodies, leaves soot on utensils and walls, and accelerates glacial melting and atmospheric warming. Yet it also depends on renewable biomass fuel and supports women’s autonomy as a local, do-it-yourself technology.

Ezekiel Stear in Auburn, Alabama

Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Time: 5 p.m.- 6:30 p.m., CST

Where: Pebble Hill, 101 S Debardeleben St., Auburn, AL

Author Ezekiel Stear will give a book talk to celebrate the release of Nahua Horizons: Writing, Persuasion and Futurities in Colonial Mexico, at Pebble Hill in Auburn, Alabama. Stear is an assistant professor of Spanish and colonial Spanish American literature at Auburn University. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Auburn University website here.

About the book:

Nahua Horizons: Writing, Persuasion, and Futurities in Colonial Mexico investigates how Nahuas conceptualized their futures in the early colonial period. Scholar Ezekiel G. Stear delves deeply into canonical texts such as the Florentine Codex and the Crónica mexicayotl as well as understudied texts such as the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, the Tira de Tepechpan, and the Anales de Juan Bautista. The study does more than describe how Nahuas conceived of their own futures: it also shows their specific plans for moving into the coming years.

Star Gazing with David Levy in Oro Valley

Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Time: 6 p.m., MST

Where: Western National Parks Association Store, 12880 N. Vistoso Village Dr., Oro Valley, AZ, register here

Western National Parks Association hosts a special book launch celebration for Star Gazers: Finding Joy in the Night Sky, with author and comet hunter David H. Levy. The author, who co-discovered the Shoemaker–Levy 9 comet in 1994, will introduce his book of short essays that celebrate of the joy and mystery found in the stars. Levy has written about astronomy for magazines such as Sky and Telescope, Parade, and Astronomy, and he has appeared on television programs featured on the Discovery and Science channels. Books will be available for purchase and telescopes will be on site for night sky viewing (weather permitting). This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

About the book:

Bringing together writing from across two decades of stargazing, Levy explores the different aspects of the night sky, from the simple star-studded vault that appears every clear night, to insight into how some amateur astronomers use advanced equipment to image details of the night sky. He writes about the James Webb Space Telescope and the Northern Lights, offering commentary on astronomical events and the profound questions they inspire. While there are books that describe how to observe the sky, this book explains why.

Manuela Lavinas Picq at Amherst Books

Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024

Time: 6:30 p.m., EST

Where: Amherst Books, 8 Main Street, Amherst, MA

Manuela Lavinas Picq will launch her book, Savages and Citizens, that she co-authored with Andrew Canessa. This celebration and book signing is free and open to the public at Amherst Books. There will be music, wine and cheese. Manuela Lavinas Picq is a senior lecturer in political science at Amherst College and a Latin American public intellectual whose work at the intersection of scholarship, journalism, and activism focuses on Indigenous politics.

About the book:

Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, the book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.

Arizona Book Launch for Rafael Martínez’s “Illegalized”

Date: Friday, October 18, 2024

Time: 6-8 p.m., MST

Where: ASU Chandler Innovation Center, 249 E. Chicago St., Chandler, AZ

Rafael Martínez will launch his book Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, on Friday, October 18, at Arizona State University Chandler Innovation Center. He will read from his work, and books will be available for purchase and signing; the event is free and open to the public.

About the book:

Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States takes readers on a journey through the history of the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the United States in the twenty-first century. The book follows the documentation trail of undocumented youth activists spanning over two decades of organizing. Each chapter carefully analyzes key organizing strategies used by undocumented youth to produce direct forms of activism that expose and critique repressive forms of state control and violence. This inquiry is particularly generative in relation to how immigrant bodies are erased, contained, and imagined as “aliens” or “illegal.”

Los Angeles Book Launch for Rafael Martínez’s “Illegalized”

Date: Friday, November 8, 2024

Time: 6-8 p.m., PDT

Where: ASU California Center, 1111 S. Broadway Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA

Rafael Martínez will launch his book Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, on Friday, November 8, at the Arizona State University (ASU) California Center. Martinez will be in convesation with Jennifer Najera, Associate Professor in Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside (UCR). Books will be available for purchase and the author will sign books; the event is free and open to the public. The book launch is presented by ASU College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, UCR English Department, Global Latinidades Project, and UCR Ethnic Studies Department.

About the book:

“Frontera Madre(hood)” Book Launch in Las Cruces, New Mexico

Date: Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Time: 5-7 p.m., MDT

Where: Isabel Crouch Readers Theater, New Mexico State University, 1317-1467 International Mall, Las Cruces, NM, and online via Zoom.

Editors Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales celebrate their new book, Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.-Mexico Border with a panel of contributors at New Mexico State University. Panelists include Bertha Bermudez Tapia (NMSU), Paula Flores Bonilla (Cd. Juárez community activist), Paola Isabel Nava Gonzales (border artist), Taide Elena (Border Patrol Victims Network), and Marisa S. Torres (SDSU and UCSD). Other book contributors attending the event will be available for questions during the Q&A component of the presentation, and during the reception to follow.

The University bookstore will sell the book at the reception. This event is free and open to the public.

Presentations will be in English and Spanish, with simultaneous interpretation available in-person and for zoom audience members.

About the book:

The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. This collection of essays bridges both methodological and theoretical frameworks to explore forms of mothering that challenge hegemonic understandings of parenting and traditional notions of Latinx womxnhood. It articulates the collective experiences of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous mothering from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Thirty contributors discuss their lived experiences, research, or community work challenging multiple layers of oppression, including militarization of the border, border security propaganda, feminicides, drug war and colonial violence, grieving and loss of a child, challenges and forms of resistance by Indigenous mothers, working mothers in maquiladoras, queer mothering, academia and motherhood, and institutional barriers by government systems to access affordable health care and environmental justice. Also central to this collection are questions on how migration and detention restructure forms of mothering. Overall, this collection encapsulates how mothering is shaped by the geopolitics of border zones, which also transcends biological, sociological, or cultural and gendered tropes regarding ideas of motherhood, who can mother, and what mothering personifies.

Immersive Book Launch for “They Call You Back”

Date: Saturday, October 5, 2024

Time: 3 – 5 p.m., MDT

Where: War Eagles Air Museum, 8012 Airport Road, Santa Teresa, NM

Tim Z. Hernandez will launch his book, They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, in an immersive experience at the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Santa Teresa is just northwest of El Paso, Texas. This “Immersive Book Launch” event will seat guests inside the same model of airplane that crashed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon.

In this highly anticipated memoir, Hernandez takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. The event is free and open to the public; the book will be available for purchase and author signing.

This in-person event is free and open to the public.

About the book:

In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.

They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.

Indigenous Thanksgiving Traditions with Poet Denise Low

Date: Friday, November 15, 2024

Time: 7 p.m., PDT

Where: The 222, 222 Healdsburg Ave. Healdsburg, CA

Poet Denise Low will read from her book, House of Grace, House of Blood: Poems, for the Indigenous Thanksgiving Traditions event at The 222 in Healdsburg. Low is a former Kansas Poet Laureate and a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets. She will join Lucille Lang Day in sharing traditions, comments, and poetry on Indigenous traditions and their connection to present-day Thanksgiving.

This is an in-person event. General tickets are $20 with the option for a student discount with I.D. Tickets are available here.

About the book:

Intertwining a lyrical voice with historical texts, Low brings fresh urgency to the Gnadenhutten Massacre. In 1782, a renegade Pennsylvania militia killed ninety-six pacificist Christian Delawares (Lenapes) in Ohio. Those who escaped, including Indigenous eyewitnesses, relayed their accounts of the atrocity. Like Layli Longsoldier’s Whereas and Simon Ortiz’s from Sand Creek, Low delves into a critical incident of Indigenous peoples’ experiences. Readers will explore with the poet how trauma persists through hundreds of years, and how these peoples have survived and flourished in the subsequent generations.

The University of Arizona Press