Join Vickie in San Antonio at these events!
Thursday, March 5, 2020, 6pm to 7:30 pm, One Poem Festival Reading: Canto Mundo, Letras Latinas, Macondo. Where: Latino Collection of the San Antonio Public Library
A poetry reading with: Edyka Chilomé, Vickie Vertiz, Tammy Melody Gomez, Juanita E. Mantz, Kay Ulanday Barrett, John Pluecker, Sarah A. Chavez
Join me as I moderate two panels at the #AWP16 writers’ conference happening in LA this year! Latinx writers from all over the southland will share our prose and poetry on the following panels, THURSDAY, March 31, 2016:
Panel R225. From New Wave and Punk: Musical influences on Latino Literary Aesthetics.
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm, Room 505, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
With special guest Michelle Gonzales from SpitBoy, Daniel Chacon, Carribean Fragoza, musicologist Marlen Rios, and Vickie Vertiz.
From all corners of Los Angeles and across this country, punk and New Wave music have influenced Latino writers for decades. This multigenre panel is equal parts reading, discussion, and listening party. Through poems, essays, and stories, the panelists highlight how, as listeners, they blend literary aesthetics with New Wave and punk sounds to tell new stories.
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
Room 410, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Panel R252. Mistaking Planes for Stars: Los Angeles Writing from Freeways to Flight Paths.
With Vickie Vertiz, Aida Salazar , Steve Gutierrez, and Melinda Palacio.
From Bukowski to Viramontes, working-class writing in Los Angeles is a longstanding tradition. Latinos are the largest ethnic group in the county, bringing avant-garde aesthetics to literature. However, many of our stories have yet to be told. This reading highlights cutting edge poetry, story, and performance by working-class and queer Latinos from a little-known part of Los Angeles: the southeast. From railroad yards to factory floors, writers share their work of grit and heart.
See you there!
Having narrowly escaped death, what Benita had to say couldn’t wait. The day she found her old journal in a taped-up box in her father’s garage, she hurried home to type up the sweet, unfiltered diary of an El Monte high school girl.
Benita Morgan Bishop self-published “Lost Girl from El Monte,” comprised of diary entries written between 1975 and 1977, just a few weeks after she walked out, unharmed, from a car wreck in 2003. At the same time, her father was in the hospital, dying from complications from a severe fall. In the midst of so much fear and loss, Benita worked on her first book knowing every day was precious.
Benita beautifully captures the raw innocence of her youth in the memoir and its follow up, “Escape from El Monte.” The book covers feature juicy old English typeface, a surfer girl emerging from the ocean, and a photo of Benita as a 1970s pin-up girl in a Bob Mackie bathing suit, posing in front of a shuttered theater.
To read the entire essay, click here.
Vickie Vértiz 