Event Category: Reading & Signing

Poet Kim Blaeser in Minneapolis

Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Time: 7-8 p.m., CDT

Where: Pillsbury Hall 412, 310 Pillsbury Dr. SE, Minneapolis, MN

Kimberly Blaeser, will read from her book, Ancient Light, for the inaugural Gerald Vizenor Lecture at The University of Minnesota Pillsbury Hall. Joining her is writer, literary critic, and citizen of the White Earth Nation, Gerald Vizenor. 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.

The event is sponsored by the University of Minnesota Department of English. This in-person event is free and open to the public. Register here.

About the book:

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.

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.

2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair

When: March 26-29, 2025

Where: Los Angeles, California

Join us in Los Angeles for the 2025 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair. Learn more about the conference at the AWP website.

About AWP:

“The AWP Conference & Bookfair is the annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers of contemporary creative writing. It includes thousands of attendees, hundreds of events and bookfair exhibitors, and four days of essential literary conversation and celebration. The AWP Conference & Bookfair has always been a place of connection, reunion, and joy, and we are excited to see the writing community come together again in Los Angeles, California in 2025.”

Tim Z. Hernandez at Boulder Bookstore

Date:  Thursday, October 17, 2024

Time: 6:30 p.m., MDT

Where: Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO

Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will read and sign books at Boulder Bookstore on October 17.  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.

Tickets for the event are $5 (plus a small processing fee) and can be purchased here. A coupon good for $5 off a copy of They Call You Back, or a purchase on the day of the event is included with your ticket. You will receive this coupon at the 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.”

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.

Poet Diego Báez Reads in Chicago

Date: Saturday, September 14, 2024

Time: 5 p.m., CDT

Where: Metropolis Cafe, 1039 W. Granville Ave., Chicago

Poet Diego Báez, author of Yaguareté White, will read for “An Inconvenient Hour: Prose, Poetry, & Coffee” event at Metropolis Cafe in Chicago, Illinois. He will be joining poets Meghan Lamb and Victoria C. Flanagan in sharing their works for this Edgewater Institution hosted series.

About the book:

The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block—but that didn’t keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself.

Yaguareté White is a lyrical exploration of Paraguayan American identity and what it means to see through a colored whiteness in all of its tangled contradictions.

“Mujeres de Maiz” Editors in Pasadena, California

Date: Sunday, September 29, 2024

Time: 6-8 p.m., PDT

Where: The Monarca Collective, 696 E. Colorado Blvd., Unit 19, Pasadena, CA

Amber Rose González, Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes, and Nadia Zepeda, editors of Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice and Feminist Praxis, will host a book signing at The Monarca Collective in Pasadena on September 29. Earlier in the month, Monarca Collective book club will read and discuss the book September 5 and 19, 7-9 p.m., and talk about the decades-long herstory of the Mujeres de Maiz. The Culminating Celebration and Book Signing will be held September 29, 6-8 p.m. All who RSVP for the celebration will receive 10% off their entire purchase at The Monarca Collective.

More information on these events can be found here.

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.

The multidisciplinary, intergenerational, and critical-creative nature of the project coupled with the unique subject matter makes the book a must-have for high school and college students, activist-scholars, artists, community organizers, and others invested in social justice and liberation.

Poet Denise Low at Santa Rosa Arts Center

Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024

Time: 7-9 p.m., PST

Where: Santa Rosa Arts Center, 312 South A St., Santa Rosa, CA

Poet Denise Low will read from her book, House of Grace, House of Blood: Poems, for the Speakeasy Reading Series at Santa Rosa Arts Center. Low is a former Kansas Poet Laureate and a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets.

This in-person event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

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.

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.

Melani Martinez Book Launch at Tucson Museum of Art

Date: Sunday, September 29, 2024

Time: 3–5 p.m., AZT

Where: Tucson Museum of Art, Center for Art Education, 166 W. Alameda St., Tucson, AZ

Registration: Free to attend, but registration is requested

Celebrate the publication of The Molino: A Memoir with author Melani Martinez at the Tucson Museum of Art! The “tardeada” (afternoon party) includes music, refreshments, and a brief reading and photo presentation by the author. Books will be available for purchase and signing by Melani Martinez.

The event is free and open to the public, but online registration is requested. The book launch is hosted in partnership with Melani Martinez, the University of Arizona Press, Los Descendientes de Tucson, and the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block.

About The Molino:

Set in one of Tucson’s first tamal and tortilla factories, The Molino is a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith. Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by 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. With clear eyes and warm humor, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors. The Molino is also 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.

Poet Denise Low at Politics and Prose in Washington, DC

Date: Saturday, October 19, 2024

Time: 7 p.m., EST

Where: Union Market, 1324 4th St. NE, Washington, D.C.

Poet Denise Low will read from for her book House of Grace, House of Blood, for the Poetry Night Panel at Politics and Prose at Union Market on Saturday, October 19. Low is a former Kansas Poet Laureate and a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets. She will be joining other poets including Christian Teresi and Jason Schneiderman. Books will be available for purchase and signing; the event is free with first come, first serve seating.

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.

In a personal poetic treatment of documents, oral tradition, and images, the author embodies the contradictions she unravels. From a haunting first-person perspective, Low’s formally inventive archival poetry combines prose and lyric, interweaving verse with historical voices in a dialogue with the source material. Each poem builds into a larger narrative on American genocide, the ways in which human loss corresponds to ecological destruction, and how intimate knowledge of the past can enact healing.

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