Event Category: Online Book Panel or Reading

Tim Z. Hernandez at UC Davis

Date: Thursday, May 1, 2025

Time: 4:30 p.m., PDT

Where: Shields Library, 205, 100 NW Quad, University of California, Davis, CA

Tim Z. Hernandez will talk about his book They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, for the 2024-25 Creative Writing Series at the Shields Library at UC Davis. He will also take time to answer questions from the audience about his work. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award. His work has been featured in international media, and in 2018 he was recognized by the California Senate for his work locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos. Hernandez is an associate professor in the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program.

This event will be available in-person and livestreamed via Zoom. It is free and open to the public.

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.

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.

Amber McCrary at Northland Pioneer College

Date: Friday, April, 18, 2025

Time: 5-7 p.m.,

Where: Northland Pioneer College, Winslow Campus (LC101), 400 E 3rd St, Winslow, AZ, with live stream at Show Low Campus (Ponderosa 101), 1001 W. Deuce of Clubs, Show Low, AZ, and via Webex

Amber McCrary, author of Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert, will read from her book for Poetry Night at Northland Pioneer College. McCrary is of the Kin Łichíí’nii clan, born for the Naakaii Dine’é clan. She is the founder of Abalone Mountain Press and is an award-winning poet dedicated to uplifting Indigenous voices. To participate via Webex, use password Poet. Light refreshments will be served for in-person guests.

About the book:

Journeying from the Colorado Plateau to the Sonoran Desert and back again, Blue Corn Tongue invokes the places, plants, and people of Diné Bikéyah and O’odham jeweḍ in a deeply honest exploration of love, memory, and intimacy confronting the legacy of land violence in these desert homelands.

Brian Haley Virtual Book Talk

Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025

Time: 12-1 p.m., MST

Where: via Zoom, register here for link

Brian Haley will speak about his book, Hopis and the Counterculture: Traditionalism, Appropriation, and the Birth of a Social Field, as part of the 2025 Arizona Author Series. Haley is a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Oneonta and a leading scholar of the appropriation of Indigenous identities by people with non-Native histories. He is the author of Reimagining the Immigrant: The Accommodation of Mexican Immigrants in Rural America and the co-editor of Imagining Globalization: Language, Identities, and Boundaries. Haley’s presentation is a virtual event that can be accessed via Zoom. At the end of his presentation, he will answer questions from participants. This presentation will be recorded and made available on the State of Arizona Research Library YouTube channel.

About the book:

Exploring the new social field that developed to spread these ideas, Hopis and the Counterculture meticulously traces the trajectories of figures such as Ammon Hennacy, Craig Carpenter, Frank Waters, and the Firesign Theatre, among others. Drawing on insights into the interplay between primitivism, radicalism, stereotyping, and identity, Haley expands on concepts from scholars such as Roy Harvey Pearce’s notion of “isolated radicals” and Jonathan Friedman’s observations regarding the ascendancy of primitivism amid global crises. Haley scrutinizes the roles played by non-Hopi actors and the timing behind the widespread popularization of Hopi religious practices.

Rafael Martínez Online Event

Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Time: 2-3 p.m., MST

Where: Online via Zoom

Rafael Martínez will talk about his book Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, as part of ASU Library’s online “Beyond the Bookshelf” series. Martínez is an assistant professor of Southwest Borderlands in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at ASU. His work focuses on immigrant rights, mixed-status families, and Latinx cultural and historical productions in the Southwest borderlands. This virtual event is free and open to the public. Register to receive the Zoom link here.

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.”

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:

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:

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.

The University of Arizona Press