Latinas de la Americas Present at NOPF

Hi friends! My name is Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, and I'm a proud Chicana poet and daughter of Mexican immigrants from San Gabriel Valley (the burbs east of East Los Angeles). In the summer of 2023, I helped organize the third Latina Writers Conference with Plaza de la Raza, Latino Arts Network, Rebecca Nevarez, Tomas Benitez, Luivette Resto, and Jessica Ceballos y Campbell. One thing I walked away from that experience is how beautiful and powerful it can be to gather with other Latinas to celebrate our ancestors, cultures, stories, families, and communities and how affirming it can be to be seen and valued by the wider literary community.

My co-organizer and comadre, Luivette Resto, and I decided to try and take this celebration beyond Los Angeles. We approached Latina poets we love and admire around the country about joining our call and working together to propose a reading at the New Orleans Poetry Festival April 20th and 21st. We're thrilled to be joined by Viktoria Valenzuela, Maya Chinchilla, Yaccaira Salvatierra, Anatalia Vallez, and local New Orleans poet, Roxy Eve.

Here's an IG Live with Luivette and I talking about how we came up with this reading and why we're taking it to NOLA.

But traveling for poetry is expensive, especially as, we all know, poetry won't make us money. And traveling as a crew is even harder because each poet has their own obligations and barriers to balance. With a $2,400 fundraising goal, we hope to offer our poets a little financial help to offset travel costs and make it possible for all of us to present as a community.

We know days are difficult and dark and that there are many important causes worthy of your funds, but if you have a $5, $10, or even $20 to help our collective of poets, teachers, community organizers, mothers, tias, comadres, y mas share our poetry with the wider community, we'd appreciate your help.

Bios:

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications) and Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites (Mouthfeel Press). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, Jentel, Yefe Nof, and National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. She teaches poetry and creative writing with Antioch University, MFA and UCLA Extension. Bermejo is the director of Women Who Submit. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times.

Maya Chinchilla is a Guatemalan, Bay Area-based writer, video artist, educator and author of “The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética.” Maya received her MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College and her undergraduate degree from University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also founded and co-edited the annual publication, La Revista. Maya writes and performs poetry that explores themes of historical memory, heartbreak, tenderness, sexuality, and alternative futures. Her work —sassy, witty, performative, and self-aware— draws on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the wounds we carry.

Roxy Eve (she/they) is a Boricua poet based in New Orleans whose love of poetry began at a young age. As an adult, her writing focuses on themes of lived experience as a Boricua of the diaspora, thriving as a queer femme, and being an eldest daughter of immigrants. Roxy Eve’s poetry is a conversation through the Spanglish lens, always teetering between both Spanish & English but never fully occupying either. She is inspired by the works of Yesika Salgado and Elizabet Velasquez. When she isn’t weaving impassioned words, Roxy Eve makes spirits bright as a wine & hospitality professional.

Luivette Resto is an award-winning poet, a mother of 3 revolutionary humans, and a middle school English teacher. She was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. She is a CantoMundo and Macondo Fellow and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her two books of poetry Unfinished Portrait and Ascension have been published by Tía Chucha Press. Her third poetry collection Living on Islands Not Found on Maps was published by FlowerSong Press in 2022. Her work has been mentioned in the LA Times, Ms. Magazine, and North American Review. She sits on the board for Women Who Submit, and she was recently appointed associate editor for Tía Chucha Press.

Yaccaira Salvatierra’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The Nation, Huizache, and Rattle among others. Her collection, Sons of Salt, is forthcoming with BOA Editions in 2024. Currently, she is translating Estancias de Emilia Tangoa, a collection of poetry about the Amazon in Perú, by Peruvian poet Ana Varela Tafur. She is an organizer for the San Francisco International Flor y Canto Literary Festival and a contributing editor for Huizache. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is a dedicated educator building literacy and teaching poetry to youth.

Viktoria Valenzuela holds a master of arts degree in English literature. She is the executive director/associate editor at Voices de la Luna Magazine, an inaugural Zoeglossia fellow, and a Macondista and has served as the San Antonio chapter co-lead of Women Who Submit as well as the organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change: San Antonio. Valenzuela's poetry and essays have appeared in Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century Anthology (published by Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts, 2020); We Are Not Your Metaphor: A Disability Poetry Anthology (Squares & Rebels, 2019); Raising Mothers; Mutha Magazine; and CONTRA: Texas Poets Speak Out (FlowerSong Press, 2020). Valenzuela and her husband, poet Vincent Cooper, share six children and live in San Antonio, Texas.

Anatalia Vallez is a writer, actor and creative alchemist from Orange County, California with roots in Guerrero Mexico. Her work centers around self love, ancestral connections and social justice. She is the author of a poetry collection: The Most Spectacular Mistake (FlowerSong Press, 2020) featured in the LA Times, LibroMobile and KPFK Radio’s Nuestra Voz. Anatalia has also had some of her plays produced including Las Sirenas, a story about student activism and Chicana mermaids. She has a BA in Sociology from UC Berkeley and an MFA in TV Film and Theatre from Cal State LA.