Lit and Luz: Panel Discussion on the new anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry with editor Ruben Quesada and contributors Sheryl Luna and ir’ene lara silva
Lit and Luz at UIC
November 3, 2022
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Panel discussion on the new anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry with editor Ruben Quesada and contributors Sheryl Luna and ir'ene lara silva (lowercase).
Date posted
Oct 4, 2022
Date updated
Oct 27, 2022
Speakers
Ruben Quesada | Poet
Ruben Quesada is the editor of a hybrid collection of essays, Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (November 15, 2022), collecting more than two dozen Hispanic and Portuguese poets. These essays explore the personal and academic practice of writing. He is the author of Revelations and Next Extinct Mammal: Poems. He has served as poetry editor for AGNI, PANK, and Pleiades and as a poetry blogger for The Kenyon Review and Ploughshares. His writing appears in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kirkus, and Harvard Review. He is a Contributing Editor at Tab Journal at Chapman University. Ruben has been honored by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events in the City of Chicago with an artist grant and fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Canto Mundo, Lambda Literary, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Vermont Studio Center. He has served as a coordinator for PEN America’s literary awards committee and the Publishing Triangle Awards. He has taught at Vermont College of Fine Arts, UCLA Writers’ Program, Poetry Foundation, and Tin House Workshops. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles. He is the 2022 Nonfiction Committee chair and on the National Book Critics Circle board. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Sheryl Luna | Poet
Sheryl Luna was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She earned her BA at Texas Tech University, an MFA from the University of Texas at El Paso, an MA in English from Texas Woman’s University, and a PhD in Contemporary Literature from the University of North Texas. Poets & Writers Magazine named Luna as one of the “18 Debut Poets who Made their Mark in 2005.” Luna's first collection of poetry, Pity the Drowned Horses (2004), won the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Institute of Latino Studies and the Creative Writing program at the University of Notre Dame, and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Colorado Book Awards. Pity the Drowned Horses focuses on cultural identity, bridges, and barriers between the U.S. and Mexico border. Poet and final Montoya Prize judge Robert Vasquez commented on Luna’s writing style: “her syntax—sometimes raw and edgy—creates a tableau where everything rushes toward ‘our wild need, all sweat, all shiver. The overall effect is simply mesmerizing.’” Luna's second collection of poems, Seven (2013), was runner up for the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize. Luna has been awarded fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Anderson Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and Canto Mundo. She received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award from Sandra Cisneros in 2008. Her poems have appeared in various journals including the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Kalliope, and the Notre Dame Review. She has taught at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado and at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.
ir'ene lara silva | Poet
ire’ne lara silva is the author of four poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, and FirstPoems, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. She and poet Dan Vera are also the co-editors of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, a collection of poetry and essays. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine and is working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body.