We are pleased to announce the presenters for the 2019 Southwest Festival of the Written Word. Please join us–it’s going to be a literary adventure! To jump to a particular presenter, click on their link below.
Rosa Alcalá
Edgar Aguilar Araoz
Don Bartletti
Michael P. Berman
Eve West Bessier
Rus Bradburd
Lauren Camp
Adrienne Celt
Daniel Chacón
Denise Chávez
Catalina Claussen
Alfredo Corchado
Ray Cressler
Jack Crocker
Sharleen Daugherty
Raven Drake
Kyle Durrie
Christine Eber
Manuel González
Ann Lane Hedlund
Tim Z. Hernandez
Anne Hillerman
Angela Kocherga
Bill Konigsberg
Jim Kristofic
Chris Lemme
Bojan Louis
Rios de la luz
Bonnie Buckley Maldonado
Magdaleno Manzanárez
Oscar J. Martínez
Margarita Mejía
Oscar Moreno
Katherine Nelson
Jacquie Nichols
Patrick O’Brien
Mary O’Loughlin
Bill O’Neill
Michelle Otero
Cyd Peroni
Beryl Raven
Peter Riva
Sharman Apt Russell
Beate Sigriddaughter
Jacqueline Soule
Mya Spalter
Heather Steinmann
Elise Stuart
Veronica E. Velarde Tiller
Amos Torres
Virus Theater
Francesca West
JJ Amaworo Wilson
Melanie Zipin
Rosa Alcalá
Rosa Alcalá is a poet and translator. She is the author of three books of poetry: Undocumentaries (Shearsman Books, 2010), The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (Shearsman Books, 2011), and MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem, 2017). She is also a translator focusing on contemporary Latin American women poets living in the U.S. She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and a finalist for a PEN Translation Award. She teaches in the Bilingual MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso. https://www.rosaalcala.com/
Edgar Aguilar Araoz
Edgar Aguilar Araoz (Hermosillo, México) is a second year student in the MFA-Creative Writing Program at UTEP. He came to El Paso to work on a graphic novel project about his family through its history of sickness. He tries to spend as much time as he can in Tijuana, where he has his love-mate, three dogs and some books.
Don Bartletti
Pulitzer-winning photojournalist Bartletti spent 32 years with the LA Times. He was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his 6-part photo essay “Enrique’s Journey – The Boy Left Behind,” the saga of Central American child stowaways riding freight trains through Mexico. In 2015 he was a Pulitzer finalist for “Product of Mexico,” a yearlong investigation about the abuse of migrant farmworkers in Mexico. Bartletti also won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Grand Prize, the George Polk Award, Scripps-Howard Award, Gerald Loeb Awards, Pictures of the Year International, National Press Photographers Association, World Press Photo and the Overseas Press Club. His photographs have been exhibited in museums across the nation and published in numerous books. donbartlettiphotography.com
Michael P. Berman
Michael P. Berman wanders the terrain of the American West and Mexico Norteño, and more recently, the Gobi of Mongolia. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008 to photograph the Chihuahuan Desert. He has received painting fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Wurlitzer Foundation. His books include Gila: The Enduring Silence and the first and third books of a border trilogy with writer Charles Bowden, Inferno and Trinity. He has received grants for environmental work from the McCune and Lannan Foundations. In 2013, he was honored with the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in New Mexico. michaelpberman.com
Eve West Bessier
Eve West Bessier is Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico. She is also a Poet Laureate Emerita of Davis, California. Eve holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from San Francisco State University and a Master of Education from the University of California, Davis. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies, and has received several literary awards, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her collection, Roots Music: Listening to Jazz, won Runner Up in the Georgetown Review Poetry Manuscript Contest, and was published in 2019. Eve is a jazz vocalist, artist, and nature enthusiast. www.jazzpoeteve.com
Rus Bradburd
Rus Bradburd is the author of All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed: a Story of Hoops and Handguns on Chicago’s West Side, as well as three other books. After coaching basketball for fourteen seasons at University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP) and New Mexico State University, he left the game to pursue a life in writing. A professor in New Mexico State’s MFA program, his books focus on the intersections of sport, social justice, and race. He still directs his acclaimed Basketball in the Barrio summer program in El Paso. He lives in Chicago and New Mexico. rusbradburd.com
Lauren Camp
Lauren Camp is the author of four poetry collections. The most recent, Turquoise Door, takes 20th century arts catalyst Mabel Dodge Luhan as a muse to explore the art, geography and history of northern New Mexico. Her third book, One Hundred Hungers (Tupelo Press), won the Dorset Prize and was a finalist for the Arab American Book Award and the Housatonic Book Award. She has presented her poems at the Mayo Clinic, and seen her work translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish and Arabic. A popular creative writing teacher, Lauren lives and teaches in New Mexico. http://www.laurencamp.com
Adrienne Celt
Adrienne Celt is the author of the novels Invitation to a Bonfire and The Daughters, which won the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction, as well as a collection of comics, Apocalypse How? An Existential Bestiary. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the 2016 O. Henry Prize Stories, Esquire, Zyzzyva, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, The Paris Review Daily, Stranger Horizons, and many other places. She lives in Tucson, AZ.
adriennecelt.com
loveamongthelampreys.com
Daniel Chacón
Daniel Chacón is author of six books of fiction, including Hotel Juárez, Stories, Rooms and Loops and the novel and the shadows took him. His newest collection, Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall®, is coming in Fall 2020 from the University of Arizona Press. He has won the Southwest Book Award, the American Book Award, the Pen-Oakland Prize for Fiction, and the Hudson Prize. He is cohost of Words on a Wire, a radio show about books and ideas. He is chair of the department of Creative Writing at the University of Texas, El Paso. https://soychacon.wordpress.com
Denise Chávez
A true child of La Frontera, Denise Chávez is a Chicana novelist, playwright, actor, and teacher. Her books include The King and Queen of Comezón, A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture, Loving Pedro Infante, Face of An Angel, The Last of the Menu Girls, and a children’s book, La Mujer Que Sabía El Idioma de Los Animales/The Woman Who Knew the Language of the Animals.
Chávez is the owner and bookseller at Casa Camino Real, a Bookstore and Multicultural Art and Community Center, on the Historic Camino Real with her husband, photographer Daniel Zolinsky. www.abebooks.com/casa-camino-real-las-cruces-nm/55655980/sf
Catalina Claussen
Ms. Claussen is an award-winning young adult novelist, poet, and short story author who carries on a love affair with the land, language, and people of southwest New Mexico. She lives with her daughter, 3 dogs, and a prolific garden on a ranch in the Mimbres Valley. The publisher of her first two novels in the Diamonds at Dusk series, Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, is an innovative independent publisher founded by authors. https://progressiverisingphoenix.com/
Alfredo Corchado
Alfredo Corchado is the Mexico Border correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and author of Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness. Born in Durango, Mexico, he was raised in California and Texas. His career in journalism includes the El Paso Herald-Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Dallas Morning News. He is a Nieman, Woodrow Wilson, Rockefeller, Lannan, USMEX and IOP fellow, and the winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize and Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism. He was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2018. Corchado lives between El Paso and Mexico City but calls the border home.
Ray Cressler
Ray Cressler grew up in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania and has made his home in Silver City. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and Philosophy from Susquehanna University. When he is not running a coffee shop with his wife, Brooke, he is a pianist/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist who has played with many bands in many bars, at some theaters and farmers markets, a couple of fairs and countless campfires. Through his songwriting he blends eclectic genres into what could be called rural-existentialist-folk-pop. He is currently working on an upcoming album, “Rooted in the Arbitrarium,” that will be released in Fall of 2019.
Jack Crocker
Jack’s poems have appeared in many magazines and journals and in anthologies of Texas Writers and Mississippi Writers. The Texas Review Press published a collection of his poems in 2009 entitled The Last Resort. He has published fiction in the Cimarron Review. His “introduction to Folksongs,” scripted and performed, was aired nationally on PBS. A songwriter, he also was a recording artist with Fretone Records in Memphis. Having been Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County, Jack is currently working on a new collection of poems and short stories.
Sharleen Daugherty
Like the double doll from her novels, Sharleen has turned her life upside down multiple times. Early in her career, Daugherty owned an east coast computer consulting business. After selling her business in 1994, Daugherty moved back to the Southwest to start a company that promoted Navajo weavers and their art. In 2000 she began to write of her journey among the Navajo people. The latest turn came in 2005 when Daugherty was awarded her MFA in Creative Nonfiction and published her first novel. She currently lives with her husband and two dogs in Silver City, New Mexico. https://sharleendaughertyauthor.com/
Raven Drake
Mr. Drake is originally from Boston and started conjuring poetry when he was eleven. Seventeen years ago he moved to Grant County, New Mexico. In recent years his explorations of mythology and etymology have helped to fuel his writing ambitions. Mr. Drake’s work has been featured in the 2004 Ink Spot Anthology of Poets, Las Cruces Poets and Writers Magazine, Tales of the Talisman, Illumen Magazine, the e-zine Aoife’s Kiss, the webzine La Lune Bleue Planete, Decanto Magazine, and Apollo’s Lyre. Raven has held readings throughout Grant County and was also a presenter at the Southwest Festival of the Written Word in 2013. https://ravendrake.webs.com/publishedwork.htm
Kyle Durrie
Kyle Durrie is a designer and letterpress printer, and owner of Power and Light Press, located in downtown Silver City. The press specializes in a line of funny greeting cards, which we design, print, and package in-house and sell to stores nationwide. Power and Light Press was founded in Portland, OR in 2009 and relocated to Silver City in late 2012. powerandlightpress.com
Christine Eber
Christine Eber is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at New Mexico State University. Her books include Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town, The Journey of a Tzotzil-Maya Woman (with Flor de Margarita Pérez Pérez), and her debut novel, When a Woman Rises, published by Cinco Puntos Press in 2018. Her poems have been published in Malpais Review, Adobe Walls, and Anthropology and Humanism. She is founding member of Weaving for Justice, a volunteer network in Las Cruces that assists Maya weavers in Chiapas, Mexico to stay on their ancestral lands through selling their hand-woven textiles. christineeber.com
Manuel González
Former Albuquerque Poet Laureate González is a performance poet who began his career in the poetry slam. Manuel has represented Albuquerque on a national level as a member of the Albuquerque poetry slam team 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007. He has also appeared on the PBS show, Colores: My word is my power. Manuel was a founding member of the poetry troupe The Angry Brown Poets. His collection But my friends call me Burque… is published by Swimming with Elephants Press. Manuel teaches workshops on self-expression and poetry in schools, at-risk youth facilities, youth detention centers and most recently at the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. https://albuquerquepoetlaureate.org/previous-poets-laureate/
Ann Lane Hedlund
Dr. Ann Lane Hedlund is a cultural anthropologist who collaborates with native weavers and other visual artists. In 2013, she retired from the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona as curator of ethnology and professor of anthropology. Her book, Navajo Weavers in the Late 20th Century: Kin, Community, and Collectors (University of Arizona Press, 2004) received the Arizona Highways/Arizona Library Association Award for Non-Fiction. She also wrote Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry (Yale, 2010) and edited Blanket Weaving in the Southwest (University of Arizona Press, 2003). A 2018 collaboration with collector Peter Hiller and artist Ramona Sakiestewa resulted in their postcard book, Navajo Weavers of the American Southwest (Arcadia, 2018).
Tim Z. Hernandez
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award winning writer and performer. The author of three collections of poetry, two novels, and a work of non-fiction, his writing and research has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, C-Span’s Book TV, and NPR’s All Things Considered. His most recent book, All They Will Call You, was released with the University of Arizona Press. Hernandez holds a B.A. from Naropa University and an M.F.A. from Bennington College. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas El Paso’s Bilingual M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing.
Anne Hillerman
Santa Fe author Anne Hillerman continues the mystery series her father, Tony Hillerman, created beginning in 1970, but with her own voice. Anne’s debut novel, Spider Woman’s Daughter, received the Spur Award for Best First Novel. Five novels followed, each a New York Times best-seller. The newest, The Tale Teller (2019), calls attention to the Navajos Long Walk and the treaty that established the Navajo Nation. Before turning to fiction, Anne published several non-fiction books and worked for many years as a reporter and editor. She recently received the Frank Waters Award for contributions to the literature of the Southwest. https://annehillerman.com/
Angela Kocherga
Angela Kocherga is the southern New Mexico border reporter for The Albuquerque Journal. She’s an award-winning multimedia journalist, contributor to the PBS News Hour and public radio news programs. She has reported extensively on the mass migration from Central America, family separations, the tent city for detained children, the border wall, and the emergence of a militia group. Angela earned two Emmy awards for her coverage of the drug war in Ciudad Juárez. Previously, she served as bureau chief in Mexico City and on the border for a group of leading television stations. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and lives on the edge of New Mexico, Texas and Chihuahua. https://www.abqjournal.com/1290268/8-hours-on-the-border.html
Bill Konigsberg
Bill Konigsberg is the award-winning author of five young adult novels. The Porcupine of Truth won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Stonewall Book Award in 2016. Openly Straight won the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, and was a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award and Lambda Literary Award in 2014. His debut novel, Out of the Pocket, won the Lambda Literary Award in 2009. His most recent novel, The Music of What Happens, received starred reviews from Booklist and School Library Journal. He lives in Chandler, Arizona, with his husband, Chuck, and their Australian Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. billkonigsberg.com
Jim Kristofic
Jim Kristofic grew up on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona. He has written for The Navajo Times, Arizona Highways, Native Peoples Magazine, and High Country News. His award-winning books The Hero Twins: A Navajo-English Story of the Monster Slayers and Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life are both published by UNM Press. He lives in Taos, New Mexico. https://jimkristofic.wordpress.com
Chris Lemme
Editor of the Silver City Quarterly Review, Mr. Lemme was a software developer and technical writer in Chicago in a former lifetime. In 2013 he escaped to Silver City where he strives to live sustainably and grow his own food. He enjoys writing about crazy, damaged and otherwise interesting people and their relationships with each other. He particularly enjoys exploring the tortured relationships between men and women. His third novel, The Seekers, is available on Amazon. https://chrislemmeauthor.wordpress.com/
Bojan Louis
Bojan Louis (Diné) is the author of the poetry collection Currents (BkMk Press, 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona (The Guillotine Series, 2012). His fiction has appeared in Ecotone, Numéro Cinq Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review; nonfiction in MudCity Journal and AS/US. Louis has been a resident at The MacDowell Colony and was the inaugural Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence at Arizona State University. He is an assistant professor of creative writing and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. https://bojanlouis.com/
Rios de la luz
Rios de la luz is the author of the short story collection, The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert, and the novella, ITZÁ. Her writing focuses on queer stories, body stories, multigenerational family bonds, and the interweaving of witchcraft into storytelling as healing. Her generative writing workshop, “Magic & The Body,” has been hosted in El Paso, TX, Portland, OR, and Santa Ana, CA. Her workshop focuses on exploring the history of the body to write creative nonfiction and the use of dreamscapes and memories as geographies for storytelling. Her upcoming work will be featured in the anthology, Burn It Down, via Seal Press. https://riosdelaluz.wordpress.com/
Bonnie Buckley Maldonado
Bonnie Maldonado is Professor Emerita, Western New Mexico University, and the inaugural Poet Laureate for Silver City and Grant County. She is also a founder of the Southwest Festival of the Written Word. Her contributions to numerous community organizations led to her induction into the New Mexico Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998. Bonnie’s poetry has been published in various journals and academic presses, and her sixth volume of poetry will be released this year. She received the prestigious WILLA Literary Award from Women Writing the West for The Secret Lives of Us Kids, and the finalist award for Only Ravens Laughing. Bonnie has lived in Silver City since 1959. http://bonniebuckleymaldonado.com/about.html
Magdaleno Manzanárez
Magdaleno Manzanárez is Professor of Political Science and Vice President of External Affairs at Western New Mexico University. His teaching and research interests extend from Chicano history and American electoral processes and institutions to international relations and borderlands studies. He has published several academic articles on a wide range of themes and co-authored two books focused on North America’s borderlands. His most recent work is a forthcoming book: Borders and Immigration: The Geo-Politics of Market Place Demands and Race Relations in North America (Lexington Books/The Rowman & Littefield Publishing Group).
Oscar J. Martínez
Oscar J. Martínez is an Emeritus Regents’ Professor of History from the University of Arizona. He has authored and edited numerous books and many articles, book chapters, and reviews. His most recent books are Mexico’s Uneven Development: The Geographic and Historical Context of Inequality (Routledge, 2016), and Ciudad Juárez: Saga of a Legendary Border City (University of Arizona Press, 2018). Martínez is a founder and former president of the Association of Borderlands Scholars (ABS) and a founder of the Journal of Borderlands Studies. In 2013 he received a lifetime achievement award from the ABS. He lives in El Paso, where he is active in community work.
Margarita Mejía
Margarita Mejía es poeta y fotógrafa de Colombia (Palmira). Es candidata al MFA en Escritura Creativa de la Universidad de Texas en El Paso. Fue co-editora para la Revista de Literatura y Arte, Río Grande Review. Fue profesora de la Facultad de Comunicación Social de la Universidad Externado de Colombia durante nueve años. Su primer poemario: La imprecisa memoria (Ediciones Isla de Libros) se editó en 2013.
Oscar Moreno
Oscar Moreno was born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. His work has been published by the likes of Levadura, Somos en Escrito and The Seattle Star. His short films and screenplays have placed highly in contests and festivals around the world such as the Sundance Lab and the Austin Film Festival.
Katherine Nelson
Katherine Nelson has been an English teacher in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and a writing instructor at ENMU in Ruidoso. An avid outdoors woman, hiker, horsewoman, and dog walker, she has more recently become an activist for environmental issues and immigration. Some recent writings include a screenplay, opinion pieces, essays, and a memoir that is still in the works. Currently, in a new role as a filmmaker, she’s working on a screenplay for a documentary film about the Gila River and the activism this free-flowing river has inspired. Katherine resides in beautiful Ruidoso, New Mexico with her Aussie Shepard Mia and her daughter. She’s also raised three humans, primarily as a single mom, while getting an advanced degree. There are times when she feels exhausted! Can you blame her?
Jacquie Nichols
Jacquie Nichols is Program Manager and Adjunct Professor in the Humanities department at Western New Mexico University. She lives in White Signal with her husband and two teenage children. She holds a BFA from Western New Mexico University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, and is currently pursuing a Graduate Certificate in English.
Patrick O’Brien
Patrick O’Brien is a photographic artist who creates images in the abstraction. He produces his art using both pigmented print techniques and 19th century processes. He is a juried member of the Sonoran Arts League (Cave Creek, Arizona); a member of the Art Intersection (Gilbert, Arizona); and the Texas Photographic Society. Pat has shown his work in numerous group exhibits and has been featured in exhibits in Cave Creek, Carefree, and Scottsdale, Arizona and here in Silver City, New Mexico. Pat is retired from the publishing business and lives in rural Arizona with his wife Andrea and two four-legged children.
www.patobrien.pics
www.geologyofspirit.com
Mary O’Loughlin
Mary is a native of Silver City who occasionally leaves the area to see the world yet always finds her way back home, which will always be “a rocky hill dotted with juniper”. Nature has always been an inspiration for words on paper. So is the outlandishly absurd world we all occupy in our heads. Mary was published in The Ink Spot in 2003 and 2005 through the Ink Poetry Contest. She is also a seamstress who always has needle and thread close by, loves to hike, jog, camp, garden and just sit and listen to the natural world around her – actually anything that gets her outdoors. She will occasionally play the Native American flute if she steps away from the shyness.
Bill O’Neill
Bill O’Neill grew up in rural Ohio and graduated from Cornell University. Elected to the New Mexico Legislature in 2008, he is now finishing up his second term in the New Mexico State Senate. His poems have appeared in numerous regional and national literary reviews, and his first collection of poetry, The Freedom of The Ignored (Red Mountain Press), has received critical acclaim. His 2019 legislation to establish a state poet laureate program in New Mexico was passed and signed into law. billoneillfornm.com
Michelle Otero
Michelle Otero is the Poet Laureate of Albuquerque and the author of Malinche’s Daughter. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, on the Modern Love Podcast, NPR’s Code Switch, and in New Mexico Magazine, Shenandoah, and The Best of Brevity Anthology. Originally from Deming, New Mexico, she holds a B.A. in History from Harvard College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. She is a member of Macondo Writer’s Workshop and a founding member of Albuquerque’s TIASO Artist Collective.
https://michelleotero.wordpress.com
https://albuquerquepoetlaureate.org
Cyd Peroni
Cyd Peroni is a freelance writer, fine art photographer, and member of Eye Lounge, an artist-run, contemporary gallery in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. Her work has been shown in juried exhibitions such as Medium Festival of Photography (CA), A Smith Gallery (TX), Art Intersection (AZ), Oglebay Institute’s Stifel Fine Arts Center (WV), University of Utah Museum of Natural History (UT), and Kimball Arts Center (UT). Cyd lives with her husband in the Sonoran desert where she loves listening for the sound of owls in the darkness before sunrise and watching clouds form along the foothills before a monsoon rain.
www.cydperoniphotography.com
www.geologyofspirit.com
Beryl Raven
Ms. Raven found her “place-to-be” here in Silver City, after much searching for just the right combination of people, weather and a small artistic community. Here in this exceptional place, she has found others who love to write, read, paint, hike, play and enjoy diverse community, an artist among many. She is a writer, poet, mixed-media artist and art-educator. Beryl relocated from Portland Oregon two years ago and has a BA in fine art. Her writing is multi-dimensional, sprinkled with an inventive landscape of emotion and, on occasion, a tune or two!
Since 1975, Peter has specialized in international idea and intellectual property brokerage catering to multi-national, multi-lingual, licensing and rights’ representation of authors and publishers as well as producing award-winning television and other media. His company has been responsible for over 40 years of production, in both media and product, resulting in billions in retail sales and several international historic events (the memorabilia of which are on permanent display in national institutions in America, Germany, and France as well as touring in many countries). Peter lives and works in Gila, NM with associated or affiliated offices in New York, LA, and Munich. www.intltrans.com
Sharman Apt Russell
Sharman Apt Russell has written a dozen books translated into eight languages. Her forthcoming Within Our Grasp: Feeding the World’s Children for a Better and Greener Future (Pantheon Publishing, 2020) combines her longtime interest in hunger and in the environment. Her Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World won the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing. She is also the author of three novels, including the YA Teresa of the New World and the science fiction Knocking on Heaven’s Door. She lives in the beautiful Gila Valley. www.sharmanaptrussell.com
Beate Sigriddaughter
Beate Sigriddaughter was Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County, NM (Land of Enchantment) 2017 – 2019. She grew up in Nürnberg, Germany, and began her trajectory of enchantment a five-minute walk from the castle. Alternate playgrounds, even closer to home, were World War II bomb ruins. Contrasts in her life became the norm. Her widely published writing has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and a handful of poetry prizes. Keenly interested in women and their situation in the world, she created the blog Writing In A Woman’s Voice, where she publishes women’s voices. www.sigriddaughter.net
Jacqueline Soule
Jacqueline Soule is a long-time Southwest gardener and award-winning garden writer with 13 books and over 5000 columns in national, regional and local publications. She has offered numerous community classes and is a popular speaker with landscape professionals and garden clubs. Dr. Soule has degrees from University of Arizona, Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Texas. She grew up in Tucson and has traveled extensively around the globe studying the vegetation. Her garden is the entire landscape around her home, filled with plants that provide color, texture, movement in the landscape, and food for the table. Many of the plants in her books were test grown in her own yard.
http://gardeningwithsoule.com/
http://savorthesw.com/
http://www.swgardening.com/
Mya Spalter
Mya Spalter is author of Enchantments: A Modern Witch’s Guide to Self Possession (Lenny/Random House, 2018). She’s a poet, editor and longtime employee at New York’s oldest occult shop. She writes non-fiction about witchcraft, poetry about science, and fiction about the truth. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Heather Steinmann
Heather Steinmann lives in Silver City, New Mexico, where she teaches writing at Western New Mexico University. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a certificate in publishing from Minnesota State University Moorhead and a PhD in Writing, Rhetoric, and Culture from North Dakota State University. Previous poems and stories have appeared in Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan, Cabildo Quarterly, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, *82 Review, Eclectica Magazine, Red Weather, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and the Fargo TedX Poetry Broadside Series.
Elise Stuart
Elise Stuart was Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County in 2014-2017, holding numerous poetry workshops for youth in schools around Grant County. Students wrote original poems and made poem flags which graced libraries, coffee shops, and old folks’ homes. Her first collection of poetry, Another Door Calls, came out in spring 2017, then she published a memoir My Mother and I, We Talk Cat in the fall of the same year. She continues to write poetry and short stories, host an authors’ radio show and work with youth, aware of how vital it is their voices be heard in every community.
Veronica E. Velarde Tiller
Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, PhD. is the author of The Jicarilla Apache Tribe: 1846 to 1980, Culture and Customs of Apache Indians, and editor of Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country: Economic Profiles of American Indian Reservations (1996, 2006, & 2015), winner in the reference category for the New Mexico Book Association and in the Writer’s Digest non-fiction category. In 2017, she was elected to the Albuquerque Wall of Fame. Her current projects include the revitalization of her Jicarilla Apache language, a biography of her great grandfather, Chief James Garfield Velarde (1853-1961), and teaching Native American Economic Development at UNM. She is editor of American Indian & Alaskan Native Peoples, a textbook forthcoming 2020 from ABC-CLIO. veronicatiller.com
Amos Torres
Born in a frog cabin, in the backwoods of the Upper East Side of Manhattan and raised in both the not so wild lands of Park Slope and the, marginally, more exciting streets of Harlem, young Amos was exposed to urban hippie health food pimps and slicked back, switchblade wielding pediatricians and did all the pretty regular growing up stuff. None of that prepared him for how pointy the desert would be. That’s alright, because on the way, he learned how to play the guitar and yell in key and, while most animals seem to hate it and shun him, some humans seem to enjoy it and reward him with trinkets and more opportunities to practise his “craft.”
Virus Theater
Virus Theater has been producing live, original theater in Silver City, NM for over 20 years. We are committed to creating original works of theater relevant to our lives and the lives of our local audience. We collaboratively create original scripts through games, improvisation, exercise, and discussion. We bring elements of music, dance, and comedy to stories that delve into deep aspects of humanity and community. This process allows us to reach across the abyss and delve into the joys and pains of living – to understand ourselves, to understand one another, and to understand our dynamic community. https://virustheater.com/about/
Francesca West
Francesca is a poet and gardener who works in the food and hospitality industry. She moved to Silver City a few years ago from Minneapolis with her family and has many interests and hobbies. Currently she is working on compiling a book of her poetry, waitressing at the downtown restaurant Revel, making jewelry and other crafts, dancing whenever possible, and just enjoying each day as it comes.
JJ Amaworo Wilson
JJ Amaworo Wilson is writer-in-residence at WNMU, a faculty member on Stonecoast’s MFA in Creative Writing, and Chair of the Southwest Festival of the Written Word. His work has been published in African American Journal, Justice Journal, Mission at Tenth, The Penguin Book of New Black Writing, and Afrobeat, among others. His novel, Damnificados, won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award; was an American Book Award nominee and an Oprah Top 10 pick. He has also written over a dozen non-fiction books, two of which won awards that saw him honored at Buckingham Palace in 2008 and 2011. https://www.jjawilson.com/
Melanie Zipin
Melanie Zipin is a mixed-media artist, performer and singer-songwriter with 3 CDs of original music to date. Several of her essays have been featured in on-line publications. Her first chapbook, Where I’m Always Going, showcasing selected drawings and poetry, will be released in July 2019. Taking an early departure from her inner-city roots, the New Mexico landscape provides an ideal backdrop for her somewhat obsessive, and increasingly incessant writing habit. She has one son, and lives with her husband in an undulating house they built from hand-piled mud. https://www.melaniezipin.com/