PINTURA:PALABRA: DC Residencies conclude

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, is pleased to announce Alexandra Lytton Regalado as the third and final recipient of the PINTURA:PALABRA DC Residencies. These one-week stints, for three Latina writers, took place in 2015 (Laurie Ann Guerrero), 2016 (Gina Franco) and conclude in 2017. Regalado will be in residence from June 12 to June 19.

   

Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s poems and short stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, Narrative, Notre Dame Review, OCHO, Puerto del Sol and elsewhere. Her poem, "La Mano," was one of the ten poems featured at Best American Poetry Blog in March of 2017, as part of the Poetry Coalition’s inaugural initiative, “Because We Come from Everything: Poetry & Migration.” She is the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Prize and the Coniston Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection, Matria, (Black Lawrence Press) is slated for release in spring of 2017. To learn more, visit her website.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s reaction to being selected:

"As a mother, publisher, editor, translator, and art advocate I spend a huge chunk of my day promoting other people’s work—granted, they are people I love—but for me to have an entire week to focus on my own projects is such a gift. It's a Godsend because it comes at a perfect time. My first book of poems, Matria, launches in May (Black Lawrence Press) and this residency will allow me to sink my teeth into my next writing project. I work closely with emerging and established Salvadoran artists and writers (who live in their birth country and abroad) and I’m interested in developing transnational collaborative projects that combine writing with painting, photography, film, performance, and installation art. More than just providing pleasure, art plays a key role in challenging the way the world is represented because it urges us to question interpretations and perspectives. In El Salvador, a country overrun by violence, street crime, and corruption, where all avenues of societal change are stalled or completely collapsed, and for Salvadorans living abroad and contending with marginalization, discrimination, and deportation, I believe art and literature can provide ways of promoting reconciliation and reconstruction. I want to research how art and writing intersect as forms of survival, resistance, protest. My agenda includes the Sylvia Plath exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art and the craft exhibit at the Renwick Gallery, the National Museum of Women in the Arts; and at the top of my list are the Phillips Collection, the Hirshhorn Museum, and other contemporary art spaces. Finally, I'm infinitely grateful to Letras Latinas at Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, and to the residency's benefactors, Molly Singer and Martha Aragon Velez."

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Publication partners for the first two residents are ORIGINS  and The Los Angeles Review, respectively. That work is forthcoming. Our thanks to Dini Karasik and Blas Falconer for saying Yes. Letras Latinas has yet to identify and enter into an agreement with the publication for our third and final resident.

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Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies, strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame, with an emphasis on programs that support newer voices, foster connections between writers, and impact local communities.

 Letras Latinas

would like to thank

Molly Singer

&

Martha Aragon Velez

whose generosity make

the PINTURA:PALABRA

DC Residencies

possible

PINTURA:PALABRA DC Residencies: installment 2

Gina Franco

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, is pleased to welcome Gina Franco—the second recipient of the PINTURA:PALABRA DC residencies. These one-week stints, for three Latina writers, are taking place in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Franco will be in residence June 6 - 13, next week.

She is the author of The Keepsake Storm, a collection of poems “that explore the surrealism of memory and narrative, especially in light of place, faith, and identity.” She has published widely in many journals, including Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Fence, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, and Zone 3, among many other magazines. Her writing has also been included in, A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years, Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing, and The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity, among other anthologies.

“The pilot experiment for these residencies was Blas Falconer’s self-directed ekphrastic retreat in January of 2014 when he visited the Our America exhibit at the Smithsonian” said Francisco Aragón, director of Letras Latinas. “As was the case with Blas and Laurie Ann Guerrero—the inaugural recipient of this residency last year—Gina will be staying in the same Capitol Hill apartment for a full week--thanks to one of our benefactors (see below). The idea is to create opportunities for new ekphrastic writing.”

In the case of Franco’s intended project, she offers this statement:

“As I began preliminary research for my PINTURA:PALABRA DC residency, I discovered James Hampton’s Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly. Constructed entirely from found objects, and built secretly in a storage space over the course of fourteen years, The Throne represents the kind of visionary, devotional art that interests me most. Hampton collected the discarded, the derelict, the ruined—the ordinary detritus of everyday life—and reconfigured it into a highly symbolic, epiphanic altar, a place of awaiting, at once welcoming and awestruck, for the end of the world. Hampton was poor, African American, Southern, Evangelical, and never formally trained as an artist. He worked most of his life as a janitor, though it seems he aspired to become a minister after retirement. Most of what has been written about him and his master work focuses on these aspects of his life. I hope to write poems in response to The Throne that discover more of the theological and existential realities at work in Hampton's complex eschatological vision of the profane made sacred.” 

The Throne is part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum:

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=9897

For this second installment of the PINTURA:PALABRA DC Residencies, Letras Latinas is partnering with The Los Angeles Review for eventual publication of work that emerges from Franco’s time in Washington, D.C.

“I’m thrilled at the prospect of working with Letras Latinas and Gina Franco, whose poetry I’ve admired for years. This also feels like a good fit because I participated in a similar ekphrastic residency with Letras Latinas,” said Blas Falconer, who took over as the new poetry editor for The Los Angeles Review in the last year.

The PINTURA:PALABRA DC Residencies are part of the larger, collaborative, multi-year initiative by the same name, which is fomenting the creation of art-inspired writing through workshops and special commissions, in tandem with the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s traveling exhibit, “Our America: the Latino Presence in American Art” and partnering literary journals. Thus far, portfolios of art-inspired work have appeared in Poet Lore, Notre Dame Review, and POETRY. Forthcoming portfolios are in the pike at Western Humanities Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The Packinghouse Review.

Gina Franco will also be doing an audio recording for the Library of Congress’ "Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers," a collaboration with Letras Latinas which continues the tradition of the LOC’s Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape. Writers recorded in the Spotlight series thus far have been: Fred Arroyo, Richard Blanco, Brenda Cárdenas, Eduardo C. Corral, Diana García, Carmen Giménez Smith, Rigoberto González, Tim Z. Hernández, Juan Felipe Herrera, Valerie Martínez, Maria Meléndez Kelson,

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies, strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame, with an emphasis on programs that support newer voices, and foster a sense of community among writers.

Letras Latinas

would like to thank

Molly Singer

&

Martha Aragon Velez

whose generosity makes

the PINTURA:PALABRA

DC Residencies

possible

Announcing the PINTURA:PALABRA DC Residencies

Laurie Ann Guerrero

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, is pleased to soon be welcoming to Washington, D.C. Laurie Ann Guerrero—the inaugural recipient of the PINTURA:PALABRA DC residencies. These one-week stints, for three Latina writers, will take place in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Guerrero, the current Poet Laureate of San Antonio and former winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, will be in-residence from April 28th to May 5th, when she will visit museums and galleries to write about, and respond to, art. Thanks to two individual benefactors (scroll down to the end), she will be provided with housing and a stipend. Guerrero is the author of: A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) and the soon to be released, A Crown for Gumecindo (Aztlan Libre Press, 2015), which features paintings by Maceo Montoya.

“The pilot experiment for these residencies was Blas Falconer’s four-day, self-directed ekphrastic retreat in January of 2014 when he visited the Our America exhibit at the Smithsonian” said Francisco Aragón, director of Letras Latinas. “As was the case with Blas, Laurie Ann will be staying in the same Capitol Hill apartment, but for a full a week and with the option to visit any museum or gallery she wants. The idea is to create opportunities for new ekphrastic writing, regardless of the art that inspires it. Ultimately, we hope to identify a journal that will collaborate with Letras Latinas and Laurie Ann in order to eventually publish the work that results from her week in Washington.”

Guerrero agreed to answer a couple of questions, in anticipation of her visit:

What will it mean for you to spend a week in DC with the assignment to visit museums and fill your notebook?

“I can’t help but see the privilege and so the responsibility of an opportunity like this. To be invited to new places and new experiences in order to create, to speak, to share my ideas is centering, empowering in a way that requires my utmost dedication—to my work, to my truest self, and to the experience itself— as a woman, a mother, a Chicana from a small parcel of land in Texas.”

Can you give us a glimpse of how you intend to spend your time? Are there particular exhibits currently showing in DC that you want to visit?

“I have decided I must be most deliberate and efficient with my time in DC, and because it is the 7 days before the official book release of my new book, A Crown for Gumecindo (and another major event I can’t quite speak of yet that happens the day after the book release), I plan to relish in the solitude, to be mindful of the ancestors and their work as I—for the first time—walk about our nation’s capital. I definitely want to visit Unraveling Identity: Our Textiles, Our Stories exhibit at George Washington University Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Girl for Sale exhibit at the American Poetry Museum, National Museum of the American Indian, National Portrait Gallery, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As a writer, I know that my own truths are made tangible by the truths of others.  I plan to be fully present, to document what happens in the space between these histories and my own.”  

Laurie Ann Guerrero will also be doing an audio recording for the Library of Congress’ new “Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers,” a collaboration with Letras Latinas which continues the tradition of the LOC’s Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape. Writers recorded in the Spotlight series thus far have been: Fred Arroyo, Richard Blanco, Eduardo C. Corral, Brenda Cárdenas, Carmen Giménez Smith, Rigoberto González, Valerie Martínez, and Maria Melendez Kelson.

And finally, Guerrero will be the guest of honor at a literary salon moderated by poet Dan Vera and hosted in the home of poet and editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Kim Roberts.

The PINTURA:PALABRA DC Residencies are part of the larger, collaborative, multi-year initiative by the same name, which is fomenting the creation of art-inspired writing through workshops held in tandem with the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s traveling exhibit, “Our America: the Latino Presence in American Art” and the partnering journals that are publishing each workshop’s portfolio, as well as a partnership with POETRY Magazine, who will be publishing a special portfolio of “Our America”-inspired work in early 2016, with accompanying reproductions of the art.

Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies, strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation, and study of Latino literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame, with an emphasis on programs that support newer voices, and foster a sense of community among writers.

*

Letras Latinas

would like to thank

Molly Singer

with Dexterity Management

&

Martha Aragon

with Stanford Medical Center

whose generosity makes

the PINTURA:PALABRA

DC Residencies

possible