Event Category: Online Book Panel or Reading

Octavio Quintanilla Virtual Big Texas Author Talk

Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Time: 7 p.m., CST

Where: Register for Zoom event here

Octavio Quintanilla, author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, will talk about his new book with Monique Quintana in this virtual event. This event will be via Zoom video. The free event is sponsored by WritingWorkshops.com. 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 in Iowa City

Date: Friday, March 7, 2025

Time: 12 p.m., CST

Where: Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA and via livestream

Meena Khandelwal, author of Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life of a Women’s Technology in India, will speak at the Iowa City Public Library on “Climate Change, Gender and Biomass Cookstoves in India.” The event is sponsored by the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) and presented in partnership with The University of Iowa Center for Asian and Pacific Studies.  The event is free and open to the public and will also be available via livestream. Doors open at 11 a.m., and lunch will be provided. Please RSVP here for in-person event by March 5, 2025.

About the book:

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.

Meena Khandelwal employs critical social theory and reflections from fieldwork to bring together research from a range of fields, including history, geography, anthropology, energy and environmental studies, public health, and science and technology studies (STS). In so doing she not only demystifies multidisciplinary research but also highlights the messy reality of actual behavior.

Octavio Quintanilla Virtual Reading

Date: Friday, February 28, 2025

Time: 5 p.m., MST

Where: Register for Zoom event here

Octavio Quintanilla, author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, will read as part of The YMCA Writers Voice virtual event. This event will be via Zoom video. 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.

Alan Pelaez Lopez at UA LGBTQ+ Institute

Date: Thursday, February 6, 2025

Time: 6 p.m., MST

Where: Environmental and Natural Resources 2 (1064 E Lowell St), Room S107, University of Arizona, Tucson register here; or register for Zoom event here

Alan Pelaez Lopez, editor of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, will give the Miranda Joseph Endowed Lecture “Dreaming as a Method Against Solitary Confinement,” at the University of Arizona. They will give the lecture via zoom video. Pelaez Lopez takes the act of individual and collective dreaming as serious methods that transgender Black women employ as they face anti-Black violence and transmisogyny inside detention centers, especially solitary confinement. Pelaez Lopez analyzes conversations they have with friends who have survived detention and bring their stories into conversation by analyzing newspaper articles, YouTube videos, and social media posts. Through this, the talk highlights the fact that carcerality attempts to govern the dream-world of migrants, especially when those dreams center on gender, sexuality, and kinship. Alan Pelaez Lopez (AfroZapotec) is a scholar, creative writer, cultural critic, and visual artist from Oaxaca, México. They will give lecture via Zoom video.

There will be beverages and light food available before the lecture starting at 5 p.m. in the ENR2 Courtyard outside of the lecture hall. The event is free and open to the public; register for in person here or register for Zoom event here.

About the book:

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. The works collected in this anthology encompass a multitude of genres—including poetry, autobiography, short stories, diaries, visual art, and a graphic memoir—and feature the voices of established writers alongside emerging voices. Together, the contributors challenge everything we think we know about gender, sexuality, race, and what it means to experience a livable life.

Virtual Event: Tim Z. Hernandez at Writers & Books

Date: Saturday, February 22, 2025

Time: 3 p.m. – 3:45 p.m., EST

Where: Virtual Event via Zoom

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will give a virtual talk for Writers & Books on February 22. He will be joined in conversation by Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate, 2015-2017. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. He is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program. This virtual event will be streamed via Zoom and is free (option to pay what you wish), sign-up here.

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.

Melani Martinez at Borderlands Virtual Event

Date: Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Time: 10:00-11:30 a.m., MST

Where: Borderlands Literature and Film Circle, virtual event, register here

Melani Martinez, Tucson author of The Molino: A Memoir, will speak about her book to the Borderlands Literature and Film Circle. Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the downtown eatery, El Rapido. Martinez’s work documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forced the multigenerational family business to close its doors. Melani “Mele” Martinez is a senior lecturer at the University of Arizona, where she teaches writing courses. Her family has lived in the Sonoran Desert for at least nine generations.

This event is free, with a $10 suggested donation. Marinez’s talk is presented by the Border Community Alliance. Please register here.

About the book:

Opened by Melani Martinez’s great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes—the molino. The book also tells of Martinez’s personal story—that of a young Tucsonense coming of age in the 1980s and ’90s. As a young woman she rejects the work in her father’s popular kitchen, but when the business closes, her world shifts and the family disbands. When she finds her way back home, the tortillería’s iconic mural provides a gateway into history and ruin, ancestry and sacrifice, industrial myth and artistic incarnation—revealing a sacred presence still alive in Tucson.

A must-read for foodies, history lovers, and anyone searching for spiritual truth in the desert, this is a story of belonging and transformation in the borderlands.

“From the Skin” Editors in Tempe, Arizona

Date: Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Time: 12-1:30 p.m., MST

Where: Labriola Center, Hayden Library Room 204, Arizona State University, 300 E Orange Mall, Tempe, AZ

Editors Jerome Jeffrey Clark and Elise Boxer will talk about their book, From the Skin: Defending Indigenous Nations Using Theory and Praxis, at the Labriola Center at ASU. They will be joined by Dr. Brittani Orona, Eric Hardy, and Alex Soto as they discuss what it means to theorize and practice American Indian Studies (AIS). This hybrid book talk event will highlight AIS contributions and scholarship. It will lead-up to the annual AISA conference happening on February 6-7, 2025. This is a free, in-person event; the first 30 attendees will receive a free copy of From the Skin! Refreshments will be provided.

This event is sponsored by ASU partners:  The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, American Indian Studies, Labriola National American Indian Data Center and the Relate Lab: An Anti-Colonial Collective for Relationalities, Stories, and Sciences.

This book talk is also available through Zoom.

About the book:

In From the Skin, contributors reflect on and describe how they apply the theories and concepts of Indigenous studies to their communities, programs, and organizations, and the ways the discipline has informed and influenced the same. They show the ways these efforts advance disciplinary theories, methodologies, and praxes. Chapters cover topics including librarianship, health programs, community organizing, knowledge recovery, youth programming, and gendered violence. Through their examples, the contributors show how they negotiate their peoples’ knowledge systems with knowledge produced in Indigenous studies programs, demonstrating how they understand the relationship between their people, their nations, and academia.

“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.

“When Language Broke Open” Writers Read at LIT Friday Virtual Salon

Date: Friday, September 27, 2024

Time: 6 – 8 p.m., EDT

Where: August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh online event

Malika Aisha, Jehoiada Calvin, Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, Tirzah Sheppard, and Ivanova Veras join LIT Friday for a group reading and discussion of When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, edited by Alan Pelaez Lopez. The writers are all contributors to When Language Broke Open.

LIT Fridays is a literary-focused, virtual salon presented by the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, featuring conversations and guest performances on the last Friday of each month at 6:00p EST via Facebook, YouTube Live, and StreamYard. All conversations are moderated by AWAACC Literary Curator, Jessica Lanay.

The free event is open to the public.

About the book:

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. The volume offers up three central questions: How do queer and/or trans Black writers of Latin American descent address memory? What are the textures of caring, being cared for, and accepting care as Black queer and/or trans people of Latin American descent? And how do queer and trans embodiments help us understand and/or question the past and the present, and construct a Black, queer, and trans future?

Tim Z. Hernandez Virtual Reading with Octavio Solis

Date: Friday, September 20, 2024

Time: 6 p.m., PST

Where: Virtual Zoom event with City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will read in virtual event hosted by City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco. He will also be in conversation with playwright Octavio Solis. Event is free; register for the Zoom event.

About the book:

A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together.

Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and the New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers.”