Writers of Somos en escrito at Lit Crawl

As part of Litcrawl SF 2020, Somos en escrito presents three poets and storytellers featured in Somos en escrito that mix the personal and political and exhibit the best in Latina/o/x writing. Featuring Lucha Corpi, Ivan Argüelles and Fernando Andres Torres.
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Saturday, October 24, 2020
6:15 - 6:45 p.m. PDT

Details on how to watch the reading here
Invite friends to the event on Facebook

Join the Q&A afterwards at 6:55p.m. here

Ivan Argüelles is a Mexican-American innovative poet whose work moves from early Beat and surrealist-influenced forms to later epic-length poems. He received the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award in 1989 as well as the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 2010.  In 2013, Argüelles received the Before Columbus Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. For Argüelles the turning point came with his discovery of the poetry of Philip Lamantia. Argüelles writes, "Lamantia's mad, Beat-tinged American idiom surrealism had a very strong impact on me. Both intellectual and uninhibited, this was the dose for me." While Argüelles's early writings were rooted in neo-Beat bohemianism, surrealism, and Chicano culture, in the nineties he developed longer, epic-length forms rooted in Pound's Cantos and Joyce's Finnegans Wake. He eventually returned, after the first decade of the new millennium, to shorter, often elegiac works exemplary of Romantic Modernism. Ars Poetica is a sequence of exquisitely-honed short poems that range widely, though many mourn the death of the poet's celebrated brother, José.

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Lucha Corpi, an internationally recognized poet, novelist and children's book writer, is the author of the Gloria Damasco Mystery series, which includes Eulogy for a Brown Angel (1992), Cactus Blood (1995), and Death at Solstice (2009). Her first poetry collection, Palabras de mediodía/Noon Words, was reissued by Arte Público Press in 2001. The recipient of numerous awards and citations, she taught in the Oakland Public Schools Neighborhood Centers Program for more than 30 years.

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Fernando ​​​​Andres ​​​​​​​​​​​​Torres is a short-story writer, poet, and musician. A graduate journalist of San Francisco State University, he contributes to various Bay Area media. He is associate editor and U.S. correspondent for the web magazine Dilemas.cl. and editor of the blog LatinOpen.wordpress.com. Under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Torres joined the Chilean resistance and in 1975 was arrested by the regime's secret police. In prison, he recited poetry and hand-wrote messages with quotes about optimism and hope to pass among fellow prisoners. Torres is a member of the ExposeFacts Advisory Board, member of the Review Panel of the Intrepid News Fund. As a composer and musician, he has worked with various groups of Latin American music and shared the stage with American artists like Pete Seeger and Holly Near.  
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