Introducing A New Book Review Series

One of my roles during my time as the 2022/2023 Letras Latinas Poetry Coalition Fellow is to act as Managing Editor of Letras Latinas Blog. As such, I’d like to introduce the newest contributors to our blog: Laura Villareal and Alfredo Aguilar.

These two poets will be working together to produce six reviews in an atypical format for a new series which they’ve named Warp & Weft: Reviews in Conversation.

This bi-monthly series will allow Villareal and Aguilar to write candidly in conversation, creating an enthralling blend of down-to-earth plática and thoughtful explication.

In their debut installment, Villareal and Aguilar look at Golden Ax by Rio Cortez, which leads them to discuss Afrofuturism, TV shows and other media, Shakespeare, and so much more.

A special thank you to The Poetry Foundation for providing the Equity in Verse grant which has made this series possible.

—Brent Ameneyro
January 16, 2023

Villareal and Aguilar in their own words, describing their new series:

"Warp and weft refers to how a piece of fabric is created; warp yarns are held stationary in tension lengthwise on a loom while the weft yarn is drawn through over and under the warp. The yarns bolster and keep each other in tension to create a woven material. We want to use this as a central metaphor for our reviews in conversation. Our hope is that together our critical attention and appreciation will be like this process–our intersecting and converging ideas woven alongside one another in conversation. We want to invoke the work of other writers as we look at each book to give an idea of how what we have read has shaped how we are reading the book in review. We hope that these reviews in conversation might provide a different kind of texture for a review, something with more voices and points-of-views than a standard review might allow for."

Schedule for “Warp & Weft: Reviews in Conversation”

January:
Golden Ax
Penguin Books, August 2022
by Rio Cortez

March:
Cenizas
University of Arizona Press, September 2022
by Cynthia Guardado

May:
Dream of Xibalba
Orison Books, May 2023
by Stephanie Adams-Santos

July:
City Without Altar
Noemi Press, August 2022
by Jasminne Mendez

September:
Black God Mother This Body
Black Freighter Press, 2022
by Raina J. Leon

November:
Future Botanic
Get Fresh Books, 2023
by Christina Olivares

Alfredo Aguilar is the author of On This Side of the Desert (Kent State University Press, 2020), selected by Natalie Diaz for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. He is a recipient of 92Y’s Discovery Poetry Contest and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Frost Place. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Born and raised in North County San Diego, he now resides in Central Texas where he is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers.

 

Laura Villareal is the author of Girl’s Guide to Leaving (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). She earned her MFA at Rutgers University—Newark and has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at University of Texas-Austin. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.