Richard Blanco
@ The Poetry Society of America
Poet Richard Blanco is the author of City of a Hundred
Fires (University of Pittsburg Press, 1998), Directions to the Beach of the
Dead (University of Arizona Press, 2005), and the most recent Looking for The
Gulf Motel (University of Pittsburg Press, 2012). He is currently featured
over at the Poetry Society of America with the interview titled “Red, White,
and Blue.” In this interview Blanco discusses his experience as a young
Cuban-American and queer man growing up in the hyper-politicized world of Miami,
his belief that poets are unjustly held “responsible” for engaging in the world
of politics, and finally his navigation
of geopolitics in order to land at a place where he may, as a poet, “
"show" the consequences of politics through portraits of people and
places: “I am more interested in the effects than the causes, in discovering
how we survive and make sense of all the suffering the world throws in our
faces.”
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Daniel A. Olivas
@ The Latino Author
Daniel A. Olivas can be regularly found at La Bloga doing
the literary journalism that shines a spotlight and enhances the visibility and
appreciation of many of today’s Latin@ writers and poets. Olivas, an attorney, is
the author of six books, including The Book of Want, a novel, and Anywhere
But L.A. a collection of stories. He is also the editor of Latinos in Lotusland: An
Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, which collects sixty
years of Los Angeles fiction by Latino/a writers. He is currently profiled
in an interview by The Latino Author. In this interview Olivas discuss his
upbringing in Pico Heights and the incredible support of his parents who taught him to love “the
look, feel and smell of books.” Olivas, the grandson of Mexican immigrants, also discusses his navigating of the
publishing world, of finding a home in small independent and university presses
who ““get what I’m doing with my writing” and his personal joys and challenges
in writing both fiction and poetry.
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Carmen Giménez
Smith and
Rigoberto González @ Critical Mass
Latino/a Poetry Now featured poets Rigoberto González and
Carmen Giménez Smith are featured in a “Small Press Spotlight” interview for
the Blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors, “Critical
Mass.” This “Spotlight” interview was conducted by Rigoberto González and features
Carmen Giménez Smith’s most recent collection of poems, the winner of the
Juniper Prize for Poetry, Goodbye, Flicker (University of Massachusetts
Press, 2012). Giménez Smith speaks of her lasting intrigue with contemporary
forms such as fairytales and folk stories for their compelling messages
regarding gender and class and for the important need to “to revisit them, to
revise them in order to participate in the important ongoing transformation of
these stories.”
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