The Book of Wanderers Launch + Houston Celebration Pictures
Miss the Houston launch & celebration of The Book of Wanderers? Check out event images below! All photos by Romeo Harrell.
Participants
Writer and activist Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, is a Cultural Accelerator. He was the first Chicano to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. In 1998, he founded Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say (NP), Houston’s first reading series for Latino authors. The group galvanized Houston’s Community Cultural Capital to become a movement for civil rights, education, and representation. He is the author of The Aztec Love God and editor of The Mexican American Studies Tool Kit. His forthcoming book, The Tip of the Pyramid: Cultivating Community Cultural Capital, is the first in his series on Community Organizing.
Farrah Fang is a Mexican Trans artist from Houston, TX. Fang engages in several mediums, with a concentration in digital art & poetry. She has read poems in public exhibitions at Art League Houston (2019) performing work acknowledging the importance of Trans representation in institutions. Her collage art has also been showcased in Sabine Street Studios’ “el chow: mango verde” (2019) curated by Manteca HTX which embraced rising Latinx artists. She has contributed to online publications such as Common Field’s “The Loop” (2020) and has participated in other virtual readings sponsored by the Houston Arts Alliance (2020) & Sin Muros Latinx Theater Festival (2021). Her most recent venture featured her digital art in the collaborative virtual show “EVERYTHING / EVERYONE” put on by the Alief Art House (2021). Fang has collaborated with Houston Trans artist Ángel Lartigue numerous times, working together as performance artists in exhibitions entitled “Operation Psychopomp (corpse maggots on the dance floor)” (2018) & “6 Daggers” (2019). Performed in club settings, the duo examined the cross sections of death, ceremonial rituals, & the queer body while paying homage to victims of transphobic violence.
Rigoberto González is the author of eighteen books of poetry and prose. His awards include Lannan, Guggenheim, NEA, NYFA, and USA Rolón fellowships, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Currently, he’s Distinguished Professor of English and the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark.
Yeiry Guevara is a writer, translator, multimedia artist and arts administrator. Her mediums range from bilingual zines, embroidery, and film. Her work has been published in Texas Monthly, VICE, Remezcla with several gallery exhibitions in NYC and TX. She has presented at national platforms such as L.A. Times Festival of Books, L.A. Zine Fest, Columbia University, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, and Twitter NYC Headquarters. After many years in NYC, Yeiry currently lives in Houston, TX where she is the Associate Director of Grants for Houston Arts Alliance, the City of Houston’s designated local arts and culture agency.
Originally from Galveston, TX, Lupe Mendez (Writer//Educator//Activist) is the author WHY I AM LIKE TEQUILA (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the 2019 John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the founder of Tintero Projects which works with emerging Latinx writers and other writers of color within the Texas Gulf Coast Region, with Houston as its hub. Lupe earned his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Texas @ El Paso. Mendez’s work can been seen in print and online formats including the Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast Journal, the Texas Review, the L.A. Review of Books, Split This Rock, Poetry Magazine and Poem-A-Day from the Academy of American Poets. Mendez is the 2022 Texas Poet Laureate. Follow Lupe on Twitter, at @thepoetmendez and on Instagram, at @ellupis.
Icess Fernandez Rojas is an educator, writer, and a former journalist. She is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA program. Her work has been internationally published in Queen Mobs Lit Journal, Poetry 24, Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective's anthology Notes from Humanity. Her most recent short story will appear in the mystery collection, Houston Noir. Her nonfiction/memoir work has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, a Dos Brujas Workshop alum, and a Kimbilio Fellow. She's currently working on her first novel and memoir. Visit her online at icessfernandez.com.