Event Category: Public Lecture

Alan Pelaez Lopez at Pasadena City College

Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Time: 1:15 p.m.-3 p.m., PDT

Where: Creveling Lounge, Building CC, Pasadena City College, 1570 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA

Alan Pelaez Lopez, author of When Language Broke Open, is the keynote speaker for the “Black, Trans Migration: Lessons on Political and Community Resistance,” keynote at the 2025 Borders of Diversity Conference. Lopez is an Afro-Indigenous poet and installation and adornment artist from Oaxaca, Mexico. By combining visual poetry, paper collage, and interactive installments, their work examines the lived experiences of undocumented migrants in the United States, the potential for vibrant Black Latin American futures, and the kinship practices that trans* and nonbinary people develop to resist and reshape power.

This event will be held in the Creveling Lounge at Pasadena City College. It is free and 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.

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.

Viggo Mortensen and Margarita Pintado Burgos Read in Venice, CA

Date: Saturday, May 10, 2025

Time: doors open at 6:30 p.m., readings at 7:00 p.m.

Where: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA

Celebrate an evening of poetry in Spanish with Viggo Mortensen, Margarita Pintado Burgos, and Omar Pimienta. Pintado Burgos, author of Ojo En Celo / Eye in Heat, will read from her award-winning book of poetry along with poet, actor, multidisciplinary artist, publisher, Viggo Mortensen who will present new and selected poetry. They will be joined by Omar Pimienta, Tijuana-born poet and UC Santa Barbara professor, whose work examines migration and border politics. The event is presented by Beyond Baroque and will also be streamed live on Youtube.

Please note that all readings will be in Spanish.

After the readings enjoy a reception with light refreshments and book signings.

About the book:

Ojo en celo / Eye in Heat brings into sharp relief the limits of our gaze. It shows us what it is to escape the mirror and move beyond mirages. Margarita Pintado Burgos invites us to ponder the impasse while showing us ways to see better, to break the habit of lying, and to confront images along with language.

With devastating clarity, Pintado Burgos’s poems, presented in both Spanish and English, give voice to the world within and beyond sight: the plants, the trees, the birds, the ocean waves, the fruit forgotten in the kitchen, the house’s furniture. Light takes on new dimensions to expose, manipulate, destroy, and nourish. Alejandra Quintana Arocho’s sensitive English translation renders the stark force of these poems without smoothing over the language of the original.

Terese Gagnon in Chapel Hill, NC

Date: Thursday, May 8, 2025

Time: 12 p.m., EDT

Where: North Carolina Botanical Garden, 100 Old Mason Farm Road, Chapel Hill, NC

Terese Gagnon, editor of Embodying Biodiversity: Sensory Conservation as Refuge and Sovereignty, will speak on “Embodying Biodiversity, Re-storying Conservation: Tending in Times of Unraveling,” at the North Carolina Botanical Garden. The vast majority of biodiversity conservation worldwide is carried out not by large-scale initiatives but by ordinary people who cultivate sensory-motivated, place-based bonds with specific plants. This talk delves into the power of everyday forms of biodiversity conservation, motivated by sensory and embodied engagement with plants. Gagnon is an environmental and political anthropologist. She is a postdoctoral fellow at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the Bringing Southeast Asia Home Initiative.

This hybrid in-person and virtual event is free and open to the public, but space is limited so register here.

About the book:

Harnessing a myriad of methodologies and research spanning multiple continents, Embodying Biodiversity delves into the power of everyday forms of biodiversity conservation, motivated by sensory and embodied engagement with plants. Through an array of interdisciplinary contributions, the authors argue that the vast majority of biodiversity conservation worldwide is carried out not by large-scale, hierarchical initiatives but by ordinary people who cultivate sensory-motivated, place-based bonds with plants.

Acknowledging the monumental role of everyday champions in tending biodiversity, the contributors write that this caretaking is crucial to countering ecological harm and global injustice stemming from colonial violence and racial capitalism.

Kimberly Blaeser in Norman, OK

Date: Thursday, April 24, 2025

Time: 7 p.m., CDT

Where: Jacobson House Native Art Center, 609 Chautauqua Ave., Norman, OK

Kimberly Blaser, author of Ancient Light, will read from her works as part of The University of Oklahoma’s Mark Allen Everett Poetry Series event. The opening readers will be Chelsea Hicks and Mitch Laman. Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist enrolled at White Earth Nation. She is a professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an Institute of American Indian Arts MFA faculty member.

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

About Ancient Light:

Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.

With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser’s innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. They celebrate the solace of natural spaces through sense-laden geo-poetry and picto-poems. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota.

“Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento” Editors at LA Times Festival of Books

Date: Saturday, April 26, 2025

Time: 4:45-5:15 p.m., PDT

Where: De Los Stage, University of Southern California, 850 W 37th St, Los Angeles, CA

Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, one of the editors of Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis will speak at the Los Angeles Festival of Books panel “Protecting Your Wellbeing Today & Tomorrow.” The panel highlights inter-generational healing. After the panel at 5:15 p.m., Fe will sign books with her co-editor Nadia Zepeda at the La Liberia Booth. Amber Rose González is the third editor of the book. All book festival events are free and open to the public.

About the book:

Founded in 1997, Mujeres de Maiz (MdM) is an Indigenous Xicana–led spiritual artivist organization and movement by and for women and feminists of color. Chronicling its quarter-century-long herstory, this collection weaves together diverse stories with attention to their larger sociopolitical contexts. The book crosses conventional genre boundaries through the inclusion of poetry, visual art, testimonios, and essays.

MdM’s political-ethical-spiritual commitments, cultural production, and everyday practices are informed by Indigenous and transnational feminist of color artistic, ceremonial, activist, and intellectual legacies.

Kimberly Blaeser and Denise Low in Ridgefield, CT

Date: Monday, July 7, 2025

Time: 7 p.m., EDT

Where: Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center, 152 Main St, Ridgefield, CT

Kimberly Blaser, author of Ancient Light, and Denise Low, author of House of Grace, House of Blood, will read from their works as part of the 2025 Poetry in the Garden event at Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center. This season, the topic is “Declarations 2025-Resilience & Rage: Voices from Marginalized America.” They will be joined by the Indigenous poet Natasha Gambrell. Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist enrolled at White Earth Nation. She is a professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an Institute of American Indian Arts MFA faculty member. Low is a former Kansas Poet Laureate and a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets. She currently is a literary co-director for The 222 in Sonoma County, California, and on the advisory board of Write On Door County.

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

About Ancient Light:

Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.

About House of Grace, House of Blood:

Intertwining a lyrical voice with historical texts, poet Denise 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.

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.

Kimberly Blaeser in Detroit

Date: Thursday, April 17, 2025

Time: 4-8 p.m., EDT

Where: McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Wayne State University, 495 Gilmour Mall, Detroit, MI

Kimberly Blaser will read from her book, Ancient Light: Poems, at McGregor Memorial Conference Center on April 17. Blaeser, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po, Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. She is also an Anishinaabe activist, environmentalist, and professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an Institute of American Indian Arts MFA faculty member.

This in-person event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the Wayne State University Native American Student Organization. Reserve your spot here.

Event schedule:

4 p.m. Doors Open, Reception, Refreshments

4-5:30 p.m. Open Mic

5:30 p.m. Food Served

6 p.m. Reading, followed by Q and A

About the book:

With vision and resilience, Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser’s innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. They celebrate the solace of natural spaces through sense-laden geo-poetry and picto-poems. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota.

The collection invites readers to see with a new intimacy the worlds they inhabit. Blaeser brings readers to the brink, immerses them in the darkest regions of the Anthropocene, in the dangerous fallacies of capitalism, and then seeds hope. Ultimately, as the poems enact survivance, they reclaim Indigenous stories and lifeways.

Kimberly Blaeser in Marquette, MI

Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Time: 6:30 p.m., EDT

Where: Peter White Public Library Community Room, 217 N. Front St., Marquette, MI

Kimberly Blaser will read from her book, Ancient Light: Poems, for the Great Lakes Poetry Festival at the Peter White Public Library. Blaeser, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po, Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. She is also an Anishinaabe activist, environmentalist, and professor emerita at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an Institute of American Indian Arts MFA faculty member.

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

About the book:

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.

The University of Arizona Press