The University of Arizona Press
Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025
Time: 7 p.m., CST
Where: UNAM San Antonio, 600 Hemisfair Plaza Way, San Antonio, TX
Octavio Quintanilla, author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, celebrates his book launch at UNAM San Antonio. His book is the winner of the Ambroggio Prize from The Academy of American Poets. Quintanilla will be joined by special guest poets Natalia Trevino and Alfredo Avalos.
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.
