Segunda Página Reading Series

For the second year in a row, Kansas Citians will have a chance to hear some of the usually unheard voices of local and national Latino writers speak with passion and power about their experience in the Segunda Página Reading Series, which will offer four events in 2008. Last year’s inaugural series of three events drew standing-room-only audiences and received much publicity. Designed to showcase the work of Latino writers and provide role models for local youth, Segunda Página is coordinated by the Latino Writers Collective.

The series is co-sponsored by BkMk Press, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City Hispanic News, UMKC College of Arts & Sciences, The Writers Place and other community organizations.

This program was made possible through funding by the Missouri Arts Council—a state agency.


Reception, Reading, and Booksigning:
Helena Maria Viramontes
Thursday, February 7, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch, 4801 Main Street

Helena Maria Viramontes is a nationally known novelist and cultural critic. She is the author or editor of five books—two novels, Their Dogs Came With Them (Simon & Schuster, 2007) and Under the Feet of Jesus (Dutton, 1995, Plume/Penguin Paperback, 1996), a collection of short stories, The Moths & Other Stories (Arte Publico Press, 1985, 1995), and two books of criticism, Chicana (W)rites: On Word and Film (Third Woman Press, 1996) and Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature (Arte Publico Press, 1987, University of New Mexico Press, 1996). Viramontes’ short fiction and excerpts from her novels have been included in The Norton Anthology of US Latino Literature, The Short Story, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (W.W. Norton), Chicanas y Chilenas: Feminist Cultural Exiles (Lexington Press), Literature as Meaning (Penguin), Approaching Literature in the 21st Century (Bedford/St. Martin’s), U. S. Latino Literature Today (Pearson Longman), Crafting the Very Short Story: An Anthology of 100 Masterpieces (Freeman Press), and over 60 other textbooks and anthologies. She was the subject (with John Steinbeck and Carlos Bulosan) of a PBS documentary program, “The Migrant Struggle” in the series “American Passages: A Literary Survey.” She has been a Distinguished Writer at the Salzburg Seminar in American Literature in Austria, received an honorary doctorate from Notre Dame, held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hedgebrook, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, received the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature and been recognized for contributions to literature from the National Latina Alliance and National Association of Chicano and Chicana Studies, among other awards. She received an MFA from the University of California-Irvine and is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Cornell University.


Reception and Reading:
Andrés Rodriguez and the Latino Writers Collective
Friday, February 29, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania

Reading from his work will be Andrés Rodríguez, the author of a book of poetry, Night Song (Tia Chucha Press) and a work of literary criticism, Book of the Heart: The Poetics, Life and Letters of John Keats (Lindisfarne Press). Rodríguez’s work has been reviewed in journals such as Booklist, Library Journal, Small Press Review, and The Bloomsbury Review. His poems and essays have appeared in Americas Review, Art & Academe, Bilingual Review, Blue Mesa Review, Lucero, Quarry West, Sagetrieb, and Wilderness, and his poems have been published in the anthologies Currents from the Dancing River (Harcourt Brace), Dream of a Word (Tia Chucha Press), New Chicano/Chicana Writing (University of Arizona Press), and Wild Song (University of Georgia Press). He is the winner of the Poets & Writers 2007 Writers Exchange Contest in Poetry and has been profiled for an upcoming issue of Poets & Writers.

Also reading will be Latino Writers Collective members Maria Vasquez Boyd, Chato Villalobos, Sarah Lynch, Gloria Martinez and Gabriela N. Lemmons.

This event will follow a reception from 5:30-7:00 p.m. to celebrate an exhibit by local Latino artists at The Writers Place Gallery.


Reading:
Gloria Vando and the Latino Writers Collective
Thursday, March 20, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania

Gloria Vando’s most recent book of poems, Shadows and Supposes, won the 2003 Best Poetry Book of the Year Award from the Latino Literary Hall of Fame and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has won numerous other awards and fellowships. She reads her poem, “Fire,” on the 2007 Grammy-nominated CD collection, Poetry on Record: 98 Poets Read Their Work, 1888-2006 (which features Tennyson, Browning and Walt Whitman, who were recorded by Edison when he invented the phonograph). A Puerto Rican born in New York City, Vando has had her poems adapted for the stage and presented at Lincoln Center and Off-Broadway. She is publisher and editor of Helicon Nine Editions, a small press she founded 30 years ago and for which she received the Kansas Governors Arts Award. In 1992, she and her husband, Bill Hickok, founded The Writers Place, a literary center in Kansas City, where they lived for many years. They now live in L.A.

Also reading will be Latino Writers Collective members Jose Faus, Danilo Aguilar, Xanath Caraza, Marcelo Trillo and Linda Rodriguez.



Performance:
Breaking Pińatas
Thursday, April 17, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Guadalupe Center, 1015 Avenida de Cesar Chavez

“Breaking Pińatas” is a cultural performance of poetry, drama, dance, and music, featuring a cast of high school and college students. It was created and directed by Latino Writers Collective member Chato Villalobos, a KCMO police officer in his day job. The event will include a question and answer session and a reception.

As part of the series, the Latino Writers Collective will also be giving writing workshops at three local schools.