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This
Year’s Keynote Speakers Include: Sandra
Cisneros Ramón
Saldívar José David
Saldívar Sonia
Saldívar Hull Rubén
Martínez Jim
Mendiola Nuestra
Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say Sandra
Cisneros (WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Literature Recipient,
2003) Internationally acclaimed for her poetry
and fiction, Sandra Cisneros has been the recipient of numerous
awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur
Foundation. Cisneros is the author of two books of poetry (My Wicked
Wicked Ways and Loose Woman), two collections of short stories (The
House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek), and a children's
book (Hairs/Pelitos). 2002 saw the publication of Cisneros' first
novel, Caramelo. Ramón
Saldívar (WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Literary Criticism
Recipient, 2003) Ramón Saldívar is a professor in the English Department at
Stanford University where he acted as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies
in the School of Humanities and Sciences from 1994-99. He has served on the
Board of Governors of the University of California Humanities Research
Institute, on the Editorial Board of American Literature, and on the national
council of the American Studies Association. Fellowships that he has received
include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a National
Council on Chicanos in Higher Education grant, and a Dallas TACA Centennial
Teaching Fellowship. He has published two books: Figural Language in the
Novel: The Flowers of Speech from Cervantes to Joyce and Chicano
Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference. He is presently at work on a book entitled Américo
Peredes and the Transnational Imaginary. José
David Saldívar (WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Literary Criticism
Recipient, 2003) José David Saldívar is the chair of the Ethnic Studies program at
the University of California's Berkeley campus. He is currently on the
Editorial Boards of the scholarly journals ALH and Nepantla. He is the
recipient of numerous fellowships, including a University of California
President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, a William Rice Kimball
Fellowship (Stanford Humanities Center), and an American Council of Learned
Societies Fellowship for Study in Modern Society and Values. His books
include The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and
Literary History, and Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural
Studies. Presently, he is
working on a book on The War of 1898 and US Empire. The book explores the
histories and narratives of the cultures of US imperialism. Additionally, it
raises methodological questions about the paradigms of American studies, the
formation of Latinamericanism, and cross-genealogical subaltern studies
(South Asian and Latin American), as well as theoretical questions about
militarism, nationhood, aesthetics, postcolonialism, and divergent
modernities. Sonia
Saldívar Hull (WLA’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Literary Criticism
Recipient, 2003) Sonia Saldívar-Hull has recently returned to Texas from UCLA and is
now an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of
Texas, San Antonio. She has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Minority
Postdoctoral Fellowship and her publications include Feminism on the
Border: Chicana Politics and Literature and numerous articles on Chicana
literature, feminism, and the cultural intersections of borderland studies.
She is co-editor of Duke University's series Latin American Otherwise:
Languages, Empires, Nations; associate editor of Signs: Journal of Women
in Culture and Society; a member of the editorial board of the journal Mujeres
Activas en Letras y Cambio Social; and a member of the advisory committee
for "American Literary Traditions: An Integrated Series in American
Literature" (Oregon Public Broadcasting and American Studies
Association). Her works in progress
include Between My Art and Activism: Chicana Fronterista Cultural
Terrains and Memorias Fronterizas: Memoirs of a Chicana Feminist. Rubén Martínez Rubén
Martínez, an Emmy Award-winning
journalist, poet and performer, is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at
the University of Houston. In 2002, he received the Lannan Literary
Fellowship in Non-Fiction and was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s
Graduate School of Design. He is
also an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and the author of the
acclaimed Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. Martínez is currently at work on a
new book—The New Americans (The New Press, 2003), a companion to the
landmark PBS television series detailing the lives of migrant families in
their journeys to America from lands as disparate as Palestine, Nigeria,
Dominican Republic, Vietnam, India and Mexico. Among his notable
contributions as a journalist in print and broadcast media, he has been a
guest commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” was
News Editor at the L.A. Weekly, and won an Emmy Award as host for the
KCET (PBS-Los Angeles) politics and culture series, Life & Times. Jim
Mendiola Jim Mendiola is a Los Angeles based
writer/director. His award-winning film Pretty Vacant, about a Sex Pistols
obsessed Chicana punk rocker, has screened in numerous film festivals,
museums, and colleges in the U.S. and Mexico. His one-hour movie called Come
and Take It Day, has funded by Independent Television Service and
developed at the 2000 Sundance Filmmaker's Lab. It was broadcast nationally
on PBS in the fall of 2002. At his 2001 Artpace residency, in collaboration
with visual artist Ruben Ortiz Torres, Mendiola completed Spaztec Goes to
the Alamo, which the duo claims to be "the world’s first Chicano 3-D
movie." A 1997 Rockefeller Intercultural Media Fellow, Mendiola is a
regular contributor on television, soap operas and all things Latino and pop
for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and other publications. He has just
completed his first feature film, a rock and roll digital movie called Speeder
Kills, which is currently playing on the festival circuit. His favorite
rock band is Bon Scott-era AC/DC. Nuestra
Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers
Having Their Say is an artistic
and cultural, not for profit organization, whose goals are in the area of
literature, literacy, and social service to the Latino community and thus the
Houston community at large. Palabra is now housed at Talento Bilingue de
Houston, a full-fledged theatre. Showcases feature nationally published
Latino and latina writers alongside Nuestro Discoveries, talent from the
community cultivated through Nuestra Palabra classes, seminars, and readings.
Performers consist of poets, essayists, playwrights, fiction writers, and
composers. However, writing/literature is always the foundation for the
event. Performances are in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. These showcases
are more than simply readings. Each forum evolves from or leads to other ways
to educate and inspire the community, and at the same time promote Latino
literature and Latino authors. To learn more about Nuestra Palabra, please
visit their website at www.nuestrapalabra.org. |