Gala Guests

Latinx Literature Now!

Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel is How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022). Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction, The Aspen Words Literary Prize, a RUSA Notable book and the winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award in fiction. It was named most anticipated/ best book in 2019 by Time, Newsweek, People, Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Esquire. Cruz is the author of two other novels, Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee and the recipient of numerous fellowships and residencies including the Lighthouse Fellowship, Siena Art Institute, and the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Fellowship. She’s published shorter works in The Paris Review, VQR, Callaloo, Gulf Coast and other journals. She’s the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh. She divides her time between Pittsburgh, New York and Turin.

Margarita Saona studied linguistics and literature at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. She received a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Columbia University in New York. She is head of the department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois. She is interested in issues of gender, memory, cognition, empathy, and representation in literature and the arts. She has published numerous articles, two books on literary and cultural criticism, Novelas familiares: Figuraciones de la nación en la novela latinoamericana contemporánea (Rosario, 2004) and Memory Matters in Transitional Perú (Londres, 2014), two books of short fiction, Comehoras (Lima, 2008) and Objeto perdido (Lima, 2012), and a book of poems, Corazón de hojalata/Tin Heart (Chicago, 2017). She is currently working on two projects, one on the representation of masculinity in Peruvian literature and culture and another one on patients’ narratives from a medical humanities perspective.

Brenda Cárdenas’ books and chapbooks include Boomerang (Bilingual Press); Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors with Roberto Harrison; Achiote Seeds/Semillas de Achiote with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, and Gabriela Erandi Rico; and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone (Momotombo Press). She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press). Cárdenas’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in Latino Poetics: The Art of Poetry; Hope Is the Thing: Wisconsinites on Hope and Resilience; Grabbed: Take Back the Narrative; Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems; Court Green; Ghost Fishing: An Eco Justice Anthology; POETRY; The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry and many others. She has served as Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate, co-taught the inaugural workshop for Letras Latina’s Pintura : Palabra: A Project in Ekphrasis, and is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Vincent Toro is a Boricua poet, playwright, and professor. He is the author of two poetry collections: Tertulia (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Stereo.Island.Mosaic. (Ahsahta, 2016), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Vincent is a recipient of the Caribbean Writer’s Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize, the Spanish Repertory Theater’s Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award, a Poet’s House Emerging Poets Fellowship, a New York Council for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and a New Jersey State Council for the Arts Writer’s Fellowship. His poetry and prose has been published in dozens of magazines and journals and has been anthologized in Saul Williams’ CHORUS, Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon, Best American Experimental Writing 2015, Misrepresented People, and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Rider University, is a Dodge Foundation Poet, and is a contributing editor for Kweli Literary Journal.

Achy Obejas is the author of Boomerang/Bumerán, an unique and inspiring bilingual collection of poetry written in a bold, mostly gender-free English and Spanish that addresses immigration, displacement, love and activism. She also authored The Tower of the Antilles, which was a PEN/Faulkner finalist, among other honors. Her novels include Ruins and Days of Awe, which was a Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year. Her poetry chapbook, This is What Happened in Our Other Life, was both a critical hit and a national best-seller. As a translator, Havana-born Achy has worked with Wendy Guerra, Rita Indiana, Junot Díaz and Megan Maxwell, among others. A recipient of a USA Artists fellowship, an NEA and a Cintas fellowship, among other awards, she lives in the San Francisco Bay area. She was one of the organizers of the #15novCuba Poesiá Sin Fin 2021 marathon in support of change in Cuba.