KCET Communities: “Pioneers of Artistic Revolution: Making Art and Space in Southeast L.A.

As part of  an ongoing project about the importance of the 710 corridor in Los Angeles, Vickie Vertiz contributed an article about the arts, teachers, and artists in Southeast Los Angeles, where she grew up. She names a few writers who also document the lives of the people in Southeast L.A., such as Steve Gutierrez’s short stories in Live from Fresno y Los and in Hector Tobar’s book, Translation Nation. 

While the 710 freeway is considered the backbone of commerce in Southern California, the Southeast L.A. region is rich with writers, visual artists, amazing public school teachers, and community art activists. Read the article here.

 

Bell businesses. Photo credit: Cynthia Herrera
Bell businesses. Photo credit: Cynthia Herrera

 

ROAR SHACK- It Takes a Year

Vickie will join the Roar Shack Reading Series in July for their Live Write!

Live Writing is a thrilling feat of writerly improvisation. As you arrive, you get to vote on a prompt. The winning prompt will be revealed to four intrepid authors – two of us and two of you audience types, onstage for all to see! Then the Live Writers will each read their just-written words, and the audience gets to vote! The winner will develop the work into a finished piece to be read at the next show.

ROAR SHACK
A Partnership with
Portuguese Artists Colony
Presents: It Takes a Year

Sunday, July 14, 2013 at 826LA
4 – 5:30 p.m.

Roar Shack is a collective of writers and artists, and over the coming months we’re going to bring you voices. Some of us come from fiction, some from memoir, some from poetry, and from music and performance and just about anything that leaves its own blood on the page. We want to bring you what you may not be getting much of. Won’t you join us?

The next show is July 14, 2013 at 826 LA in Echo Park (http://826la.org/) from 4-5:30 pm.

We dare you to miss this lineup:

Amy Boutell: Amy Boutell’s short stories have appeared in Post Road, New Letters, Nimrod, and Other Voices, and her first novel, The Invention of Violet, was a finalist for the 2012 Pirate’s Alley/Faulkner Society Novel-in-Progress competition. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and has received support from the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and Summer Literary Seminars. She lives in Santa Barbara and works as an instructor at UCSB’s Writing Lab.

Brittany Michelson: Brittany Michelson’s short fiction and CNF is published in The Whistling Fire, Bartleby Snopes, Flashquake, Effluvia, Sleet Magazine, Speech Bubble Magazine, Backhand Stories, Bat Terrier, Glossolalia Fiction, Every Day Fiction, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, and other online journals. Her short story “The Experiment” was included in Speech Bubble Magazine’s “Best Of” anthology, and her short story “Postpartum” was a Story Of the Month winner in Bartleby Snopes. Print work is published in PoemMemoirStory Magazine, If & When Literary Journal, an anthology by Bona Fide Books, and The Poetry Of Yoga Vol. 2. She is a private homeschool teacher and teaches one college composition class.

Zoe Ruiz interviews our musica guest, Alex Maslansky: Zoë Ruiz is the Saturday Editor for The Rumpus and staff member of FOUND. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Two Serious Ladies, and Trop. Currently she’s working on her interview project “Learn People Better” and curates READINGS, a Los Angeles based reading series. She lives in Los Angeles and when she is not writing, she teaches yoga.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo: Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo (so-chee who-lisa ber-may-ho) is the creator and curator of Beyond Baroque’s monthly reading series HITCHED, a founding editor of The Splinter Generation, and was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Award. Her work has been published in The Los Angeles Review, PALABRA, CALYX and The Acentos Review, and she is the winner of the 2013 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange. She received an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. In August 2011, Xochitl-Julisa volunteered with the Tucson-based direct humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. Poems from her manuscript, The Mediation for the Lost and Found, are inspired by her time in the Arizona desert. She teaches high school English and drama in Arcadia, CA.

Live Write winner Caitlin Myer: Her short stories have been published in literary magazines such as Joyland, Things That Are True, and upcoming in Eleven Eleven. Her first novel, Hoodoo, was serialized on Fiction365. She is the founder of the San Francisco-based literary reading series Portuguese Artists Colony, and she lives wherever she puts down her suitcase.

Live write guest Vickie Vértiz: Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in southeast Los Angeles. Her writing explores the intersections of feminism, identity, and Latino sub-cultures through everyday beauty. Her writing is widely anthologized, found in publications such as Open the Door, from McSweeney’s and the Poetry Foundation. Her poetry collection, Swallows was just released by Finishing Line Press. She is a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree at UC Riverside.

Sunday, July 14
4-5:30 p.m.
826LA
1714 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 413-3388

PARKING: There is a large lot behind 826LA and the rest of the businesses on that block. Sunday parking is free!