Event Category: Public Lecture

Cynthia Radding in Virtual Arizona History Event

Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Time: 12 p.m., MST

Where: Arizona Historical Society virtual event

Cynthia Radding, author of Bountiful Deserts: Sustaining Indigenous Worlds in Northern New Spain, will speak on “Spiritual Geographies and Imperial Borderlands in the Sonoran Desert,” as part of the Arizona Historical Society’s summer history talks. This summer, the series focuses on the Spanish period in Arizona. The event is free, but donations are welcome at registration. Register here for this virtual event.

About the book:

Bountiful Deserts foregrounds the knowledge of Indigenous peoples in the arid lands of northwestern Mexico, for whom the desert was anything but barren or empty. Instead, they nurtured and harvested the desert as a bountiful and sacred space. Drawing together historical texts and oral testimonies, archaeology, and natural history, author Cynthia Radding develops the relationships between people and plants and the ways that Indigenous people sustained their worlds before European contact through the changes set in motion by Spanish encounters, highlighting the long process of colonial conflicts and adaptations over more than two centuries. This work reveals the spiritual power of deserts by weaving together the cultural practices of historical peoples and contemporary living communities, centered especially on the Yaqui/Yoeme and Mayo/Yoreme.

Chloe Garcia Roberts Reads in Boston

Date: Thursday, May 29, 2025

Time: 6:30 p.m., EDT

Where: Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA

Three writers celebrate the wonderful world of plants through poetry at A Gathering of Plants and Poetry at the Arnold Arboretum. Chloe Garcia Roberts will read her prose poem, “To the Heart’s Forest She Fleeth,” about the connection between motherhood and trees. Garcia Roberts translated Homero Aridjis’s Carne de Dios: A Novel, forthcoming from The University of Press. K Prevallet will read a collection of poems on medicinal plants from her recent book A Varied and Tender Multiplicity. And Gillian Osborne will read a selection of plant-based poetry as well as essays from her book Green Green Green.

This event is free and open to the public.

About Carne de Dios:

In the remote mountains of Oaxaca, the Beatniks have arrived.

María Sabina, the renowned Mazatec healer, spends her days in the small town of Huautla de Jiménez selling produce at the market and foraging under the new moon for the sacred mushrooms that grow near her home—her Holy Children, Carne de Dios, or Flesh of God. But her life changes forever when an amateur mycologist from New York, with a cameraman in tow, visits her to experience for himself the mushroom ceremony, or velada, he knows only from whispers in anthropological records. When he publishes an unauthorized article about his experience in LIFE Magazine 1957, the stage is set for an explosive encounter between the burgeoning international counterculture and the woman who became an unwilling icon of the psychedelic revolution.

Gary Nabhan at Mission Garden

Date: Thursday, May 15, 2025

Time: 5 p.m., MST

Place: Mission Garden, 946 W Mission Ln., Tucson, AZ

Gary Nabhan invites us to ask, “Why Does the Desert Smell Like Rain: A Desert Whodunnit (with Recipes)” in this first sunset event of the summer at Mission Garden. Nabhan is desert ecologist and ethnobotanist with fifty years of fieldwork in the desert. He wrote his now classic book, The Desert Smells Like Rain at the beginning of his career. In the hot summer season, Mission Garden invites to enjoy the evening sunset glow and cooler temperatures at the garden. This free event will feature food from Oaxarico.

About the book:

Published more than forty years ago, The Desert Smells Like Rain remains a classic about nature, the Sonoran Desert and the Tohono O’odham. Gary Paul Nabhan brings O’odham voices to the page at every turn. He writes elegantly of how they husband scant water supplies, grow crops, and utilize edible wild foods. Woven through his account are coyote tales, O’odham children’s impressions of the desert, and observations of the political problems that come with living on both sides of an international border. Nabhan conveys the everyday life and extraordinary perseverance of these desert people.

Ken Lamberton Santa Cruz River Virtual Event

Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2025

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

Where: Online via Zoom, register here

Ken Lamberton will speak about his book, Dry River: Stories of Life, Death, and Redemption on the Santa Cruz, at a virtual event hosted by the Borderlands Literature & Film Circle. Lamberton holds degrees in biology and creative writing from the University of Arizona and lives with his wife in a 1890s stone cottage near Bisbee. The event is free, but the suggested donation is $10. Register to receive Zoom link.

About the book:

Ken Lamberton finds his way through a lifetime of exploring southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz River. This river—dry, still, and silent one moment, a thundering torrent of mud the next—serves as a reflection of the desert around it: a hint of water on parched sand, a path to redemption across a thirsty landscape.

With his latest book, Lamberton takes us on a trek across the land of three nations—the United States, Mexico, and the Tohono O’odham Nation—as he hikes the river’s path from its source and introduces us to people who draw identity from the river—dedicated professionals, hardworking locals, and the author’s own family. These people each have their own stories of the river and its effect on their lives, and their narratives add immeasurable richness and depth to Lamberton’s own astute observations and picturesque descriptions.

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.

The University of Arizona Press