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Save the date: March 23, 24 and 30, 31
Questions? Please email either palabrasdelpueblo@mexicanos2070.com or somosenescrito@gmail.com
Spring Panel
The panel will happen on Wednesday March 27, 2024 7pm online and will be composed of independent raza magazines to discuss the importance of having magazines and journals that cater to our community and be available to engage with Palabras students. The panel includes editors from Somos en escrito Magazine, La Raiz, LatineLit, and Sin Cesar.
Click here for the Zoom link for our panel of
independent Raza presses!
Wednesday March 27, 2024 7pm PST
Spring Presentations
Presentations will happen for one hour before each class and will be addressed and engage all workshop participants. Spring presentations will be given by Scott Russell Duncan (on addressing our community), Matt Sedillo (on writer survival), E.G. Condé (on Indigenous futurism & native ways of thinking) and Gabriela Rios (Testimonios as a Resistance Genre).
Spring 2024 Classes Offered
This generative writing workshop will primarily focus on creative nonfiction to create mythos based on your lived experiences. Prompts will focus on writing from body memories and exploring liminal spaces that sit in the portals of your imagination. We will build from there.
This workshop focuses on YOU.
Your origin story.
Your roots.
The characters you bring to life.
Your call to be a storyteller.
Join internationally renowned, world traveling poet Matt Sedillo as he guides workshop attendants to explore the events of their own lives as the product of broader historical forces. Using a multi prompt strategy Sedillo's simple but effective workshop ties the struggles of the individual to the struggles of the community while also arguing that no individual crisis can be truly solved without solving the crisis the community is facing. Your story is part of the bigger story of your people. Tell that story, awaken your people. The personal is political.Join internationally renowned, world traveling poet Matt Sedillo as he guides workshop attendants to explore the events of their own lives as the product of broader historical forces. Using a multi prompt strategy Sedillo's simple but effective workshop ties the struggles of the individual to the struggles of the community while also arguing that no individual crisis can be truly solved without solving the crisis the community is facing. Your story is part of the bigger story of your people. Tell that story, awaken your people. The personal is political.
If you were to journey through the borderlands, what stories would you encounter? Would they be of curanderas driving lowriding hovercrafts exorcising those possessed by The Curse of El Mal Ojo?
For our gente, speculative fiction allows us the freedom to tell similar stories unfiltered without fearing the straitjacket while also envisioning wildly new worlds and possibilities
Embark on a creative odyssey in our Graphic Novel Writing Workshop, where we delve into the captivating realm of the hero's journey. Explore the art of storytelling through stunning visuals and compelling narratives. Unlock the secrets of crafting unforgettable characters, epic challenges, and triumphant transformations. Join us for an immersive experience that merges the power of words and images, guiding you on a path from ordinary to extraordinary. Unleash your inner hero and shape worlds beyond imagination in this transformative workshop. Your epic adventure begins here.
This workshop will focus on the writing of testimonios. The testimonio is a genre of social justice writing that grew out of organizing and activism across the U.S. and Latin America, and that has strong roots in Indigenous storytelling traditions. We will work on building stories from our personal experiences and learning how to connect those stories to larger narratives of solidarity. We will focus on creating and writing for our own communities.
This workshop will focus on helping Chicanx writers immerse themselves in their fiction and use their life experiences and cultural touchstones to find their voices. Through journal entries, generative prompts, and presentations on effective fiction technique such as robust points of view for strong storytelling, Chicanx writers will explore the literary possibilities for their prose. The final session will focus on constructive peer/group review, finding supportive publishers and sustaining a Chicanx writing community to “voice” (publish and peer-review) their fiction.
If writing is a gift, a poder, within every aspiring writer, then giving it to the world is our aim. And in a world of turmoil, uncertainty, oppressions, this is greatly enriched by the careful, methodical, yet organic and even rasquache manner of your giving. You need skills, strategies, and subtle earth. But most importantly you must write. Write your heart out. Write till you scare yourself. And with every obstacle and distraction, don't ever stop. Luis J. Rodriguez is a multi-genre writer who has been published by Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, but also medium and small presses like Curbstone, Lee & Low, and Seven Stories. He has also been a working journalist, TV script consultant, and a playwright. He's founding editor of Tia Chucha Press and former Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Story is our heritage. Writing our weapon. Write as if your life depends on it.
Gonzo Science Fiction, Chicano Style
with Ernest Hogan
Ernest Hogan was born in East L.A. during the Atomic Age and his mother’s maiden name is Garcia. His 40 years of writing and publishing science fiction and other strange things have caused some call him the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, though there has not yet been a DNA test.
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Come, learn his gonzo techniques to use the weirdness of the Latinoid Continuum in your writing, and how to market yourself to the Anglo-centric publishing industry, use the social media for self-promotion, as well as hear outrageous--sometimes hair-raising--firsthand anecdotes of living a professional writer’s life.
His will also answer your questions, wants this to be an interactive experience, hopes to learn a few things himself, and maybe even get his mind blown.
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During the course of the workshop, he will start and write a story, sharing how he does it (it will get gonzo), and help the students do the same.
Then we will all set our creations loose on an unsuspecting world . . .