Check out Stephen Burt’s profile of Terrance Hayes in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Poems by both Hayes and his wife Yona Harvey (also featured in the interview) appear in HUIZACHE’s fourth issue.
Category Archives: Huizache News
Perdomo, Tobar Among NBCC Finalists
Two HUIZACHE contributors are among the finalists for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award, announced on Monday, January 19.
In the poetry category, Willie Perdomo has been named for “The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon” (Penguin Books). Other finalists in the category are Saeed Jones, Claudia Rankine, Christian Wiman, and Jake Adam York.
In the nonfiction category, Héctor Tobar has been named for “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Other finalists in the category are David Brion Davis, Peter Finn and Petra Couvee; Elizabeth Kolbert; and Thomas Piketty.
Perdomo appeared in HUIZACHE’s debut issue and Tobar in our third issue. Congratulations to both!
Remembering Michele Serros
Writer, spoken word artist, social commentator, and “Chicana role model” Michele Serros passed away at her home in Berkeley on January 4, 2015.
- Michele Serros reads at Pegasus Books, January 2012. Credit: Artnoose/Flickr
Serros’ first book Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of Death, Identity and Oxnard, a collection of stories and poetry, was published in 1994, while she was still a student at Santa Monica College. The book was later reissued by Riverhead Books. Her second book, the story collection How to be a Chicana Role Model, was published in 2000 and went on to become a Los Angeles Times best seller. More recently, she wrote two young adult novels (Honey Blonde Chica and Scandalosa!) about Mexican-American surfer girl Evie Gomez.
A multitalented writer and performer, Serros toured with Lollapalooza, produced a spoken word album (an audio version of Chicana Falsa), worked as a writer for the George Lopez Show, and provided commentaries for NPR. She also contributed regularly to the Huffington Post, writing about the First Annual Latina Short Film Festival, Jonathan Winters, Chipotle’s “Cultivating Thought” series, and, in her final essay, her battle with cancer.
“It was always about barrios, borders and bodegas, and I wanted to present a different type of life, a life that truly goes on that we don’t always see in the mainstream media.” – Michele Serros
A roundup of reflections on Michele Serros’ life, work, and influence:
- KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
- David Ulin at the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy
- Remezcla’s 13 Lit Chicano Must Reads, in Memory of Michele Serros
- NPR’s Mandalit del Barco’s Remembering ‘Generation Mex’ Writer And Proud Outsider Michele Serros
- Cosmopolitan’s Michelle Mulligan
On his Facebook page, Huizache’s founding editor Dagoberto Gilb remarked, “Michele Serros was my friend. Heartbreaking to hear of her premature passing. So many stories to tell… May she ride a skateboard to peace.”
We are honored to have published Michele Serros’ “A Bedtime Story” in our second issue; we’re sharing it with you now.
Lalo Alcaraz in the New York Times
Lalo Alcaraz, the cover artist for HUIZACHE’s fourth issue, is featured in a new video at the New York Times.
The video is part of a new series called “Off Color,” highlighting “several artists of color who use humor to make social statements about the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways that race plays out in America today.”
Terrance Hayes Named 2014 MacArthur Fellow
Congratulations to Terrance Hayes, who has been named as a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. Hayes’ poetry appears in HUIZACHE’s fourth issue.
In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Hayes says of the award, “I’m dumbfounded. I really don’t know what to do with it. I’m glad to have a little time to think about it. I enjoy teaching, so my first response is to not take time off from teaching because it is so connected to my writing process. I’m glad money doesn’t spoil. I’ll figure it out. I’d like to help my community and my fellow poets. This is so overwhelming I can’t say what will come of it. I hope to continue to grow as a writer and I’ll think about how to make that happen with this honor.”
For more information, see:
- NPR’s MacArthur Fellow Terrance Hayes: Poems Are Music, Language Our Instrument.
- MacArthur Foundation bio of Terrance Hayes.
Alex Espinoza Wins American Book Award
Alex Espinoza has won a 2014 American Book Award for his novel The Five Acts of Diego León. The award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation, “respects and honors excellence in American literature without restriction or bias with regard to race, sex, creed, cultural origin, size of press or ad budget, or even genre.”
Espinoza’s story “Scenes from the Films of Orlando Real” – from an earlier version of Diego León – appeared in HUIZACHE’s debut issue.
HUIZACHE’s Fourth Issue!
HUIZACHE is back, with our biggest (and dare we say best?) issue yet! Our fourth issue features prose by Yvette Benavides, Maria DeGuzmán, Rolando Hinojosa, Dana Johnson, Rubén Martinez, and Maceo Montoya (among others); poetry by Roberto Castillo Udiarte, Tameka Cage Conley, Sandra Cisneros, Carmen Giménez Smith, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Yona Harvey, Terrance Hayes, Sheryl Luna, and Danny Romero (and many more); and a cover by infamous cartoonist—and soon-to-be yet more notorious when his animated TV show “Bordertown” appears this coming spring on the Fox network—Lalo Alcaraz.
How can we not love that HUIZACHE has its own punk Frida?
A magazine rooted and produced in the Latino West, HUIZACHE represents the finest and most beautiful of those who are not born and bred on the right land, in the right cities, who are too often and too dismissively ignored. HUIZACHE proudly highlights those whose homes too many fly over or drive past quickly and distractedly, missing, as in the desert, the stunning complexity in the brown soil.
Huizache Contributors on PW Fall 2014 Books List
Publishers Weekly has named two forthcoming books by HUIZACHE contributors Domingo Martinez and Héctor Tobar to their list of most anticipated books of Fall 2014.
In the History/Military History category, PW lists Tobar’s Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct.), asking, “Who better to collect and convey the retrospective journeys of the 33 trapped Chilean miners than novelist and Pulitzer-Prize–winning journalist Héctor Tobar?” The book also earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
Tobar vividly narrates the miners’ lives post-rescue as they come to terms with their life-changing experience and the media frenzy surrounding it. Rich in local color, this is a sensitive, suspenseful rendering of a legendary story.
In the Memoir/Travel category, PW includes Domingo Martinez’s My Heart is A Drunken Compass (Globe Pequot/Lyons, Nov.), noting “Martinez’s first memoir, The Boy Kings of Texas, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Here he returns to his roots with another bittersweet story of family.” PW’s full review of the book has yet to be released.
Poets Laureate in HUIZACHE
The New York Times reports on the growth of the position of poet laureate in states and cities across the county.
Among the poets laureate HUIZACHE has published:
- Laurie Ann Guerrero (San Antonio)
- Juan Felipe Herrera (California)
- Alejandro Murguía (San Francisco)
- Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio)
HUIZACHE Contributor News
Updates on some of our contributors:
- Maria Venegas’ memoir Bulletproof Vest: The Ballad of an Outlaw and His Daughter was published in June by Farrar Straus & Giroux. NPR raves: “[A]s amazing as that emotional honesty is, it’s the brilliantly executed narrative structure — the stubborn refusal to give in to established perceptions about the memoir — that makes the book truly amazing. It’s likely Bulletproof Vest will be taught in college classes for years to come, not just because of its brutal and heartfelt prose, but because of its technical brilliance. There are more than a thousand stories in this book, each one holding the others up and collapsing in on themselves. It’s a stunning achievement, and it proves, beautifully, what the memoir can be.” An excerpt from the book in progress appeared in h1.
- Tim Seibles has been awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize: “Three judges selected Seibels for his book “Fast Animal,” a collection of work that threads life’s journey from childhood to adulthood. The text was a 2012 National Book Award finalist.” Poems by Seibles appeared in h1 and h3.
- Héctor Tobar’s “Sixty-Nine Days” appears in the July 7 issue of the New Yorker. An account of the ordeal of the Chilean miners, the piece is an excerpt from his forthcoming book Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. Tobar’s poetry appeared in h3.