Latino Literature / La literatura latina II

2008 conference participants

Daniel Alarcón: Daniel Alarcón is the author of the novel Lost City Radio, named a Best Book of the Year by the LA Times and the Washington Post, and the short-story collection War by Candlelight. He co-edits the bilingual review Etiqueta Negra, published in Lima, Peru and online, and has published his fiction and essays in the New Yorker, Granta, and Harper’s. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Brenda Cárdenas: Brenda Cárdenas is a writer and Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of a chapbook of poetry entitled From the Tongues of Brick and Stone and the forthcoming Boomerang.

Luís Cortés Bargalló: Luís Cortés Bargalló is a poet based in Baja California and Mexico City. He is also the co-editor of a two-volume, bilingual anthology of poetry from Mexico and the United States, Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico and Líneas conectadas: Nueva poesía de los Estados Unidos.

Lesley Feracho: Lesley Feracho is an Associate Professor in the Department of Romances Languages and the Institute of African American Studies at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Linking the Americas: Race, Hybrid Discourses and the Reformulation of Feminine Identity.

Dagoberto Gilb: PEN/Hemingway Prize winner Dagoberto Gilb is author of the short story collection The Magic of Blood and Woodcuts of Women, and the novels The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña and most recently The Flowers. He has also published Gritos, a collection of essays, and edited an anthology of Texas-Mexican literature titled Hecho en Tejas. He teaches creative writing at Texas State University in San Marcos.

Maria Kramer: Maria Kramer is a librarian for the Redwood City Public Library System in California. She is the regional chapter president of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish speaking.

Lázaro Lima: An Associate Professor of Latino/a Studies at Bryn Mawr College, Lázaro Lima is the author of The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory. He is currently working on a documentary film based on his current book project Boricua Insurgencies: Puerto Rico, Colonial Nationalism, and Counterhegemony, about clandestine contraceptive pill trials in Puerto Rico in the 1950’s.

Andrea Montejo: Andrea Montejo is a literary agent and founder of Indent Literary Agency, which specializes in Latin American and Latino authors. At HarperCollins in New York she was one of the founding editors of Rayo, the company’s Spanish-language imprint.

Achy Obejas: Achy Obejas is a writer, editor, translator, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novels Days of Awe and Memory Mambo and the short story collection We Came all the Way from Cuba so You Could Dress Like This? as well as a book of poetry. She recently edited the anthology Havana Noir, and is currently working on the Spanish translation of Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. She is a visiting writer at DePaul University in Chicago.

Ana-Elba Pavon: Ana-Elba Pavon is a librarian for the San Mateo Public Library System in California. She is past president of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish speaking.

Marc David Pinate: Marc David Pinate is a spoken-word poet, performer, dramatist, musician, and teacher as well as the author of several plays, including Mex-Files, The Tale of Johnny Hispanic, Amor Rabioso, The Lunatic and The Journey of Isis. Currently Program Manager at Galería de la Raza in San Francisco, his current projects include fronting his new musical collaboration, TOCAYO, and performing guerrilla theater on BART trains.

Cristina Rivera Garza: Cristina Rivera Garza, one of Mexico’s leading novelists, has received six of the most respected literary awards in Latin America. She has published several collections of short stories, poems and essays as well as two novels, notably Nadie me verá llorar, translated as No One Will See Me Cry. She also writes La mano oblicua/The Oblique Hand, a weekly column for the cultural section of the Mexican newspaper Milenio, and maintains No Hay Tal Lugar, her blog. She teaches bilingual creative writing at the University of California, San Diego.

Ana Patricia Rodríguez: Ana Patricia Rodríguez is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and U.S. Latina/o Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of numerous articles on Salvadoran and Central American culture, as well as the forthcoming book Dividing the Isthmus: Central American Transnational Histories, Literatures, and Cultures.

María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba: María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba is a researcher for El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Ciudad Juárez. She is the author of Mujeres y fronteras, una perspectiva de género and co-author with Ricardo Aguilar of Lo que el viento llevó a Juárez: Testimonios de una ciudad que se obstina. Her most recent publication is Border Women, Writings from la frontera, co-authored with Debra Castillo.

Roberto Tejada: Roberto Tejada is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin as well as an art critic, poet, translator, and blogger. He founded the English-Spanish literary review Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. He is also the author of various publications in the United States and Latin America, including the forthcoming Cecilia Alvarez Muñoz (A Ver).

Héctor Tobar: Héctor Tobar is the author of the celebrated novel The Tattooed Solider and of the widely reviewed non-fiction book Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and was, until recently, The Times’ Mexico City Bureau Chief.