The Southwest Festival of the Written Word is pleased to introduce our honorary patrons, whose time and and wise guidance have made our event flourish. All have spoken at the Festival more than once, and all have won major literary awards.
In alphabetical order, they are:
Denise Chávez
Denise Chávez is a performance writer, novelist and teacher who lives and works on the U.S./México border corridor in southern New Mexico. She is Director/Bookseller at Casa Camino Real, a bookstore and gallery on the historic Camino Real in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Chávez believes in the power of writing to heal lives and heal the many borders between people, real and imagined.
Her most recent novel is The King and Queen of Comezón (2014). Her works includes A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture (Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2006), La Ultima de Las Muchachas del Menu (Vintage, 2005), The Last of the Menu Girls (Vintage, 2004), Loving Pedro Infante (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), Face of An Angel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994).
Among her awards and prizes are Hispanic Heritage Award, the American Book Award, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fellowship, Writers of the Pass, New Mexico Governor’s Award in Literature, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of New Mexico.
Stella Pope Duarte
Stella Pope Duarte is described as a “magical weaver with a sure hand and a pure heart,” and praised as an author who “will enlarge humanity.” Raul H. Yzaguirre: Seated at the Table of Power, is her most current work. Duarte has won honors and awards nationwide, including a 2009 American Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize nomination, the Southwest Book of the Year Award, and a Book Sense 76 Selection. She is a descendant of Irish and Mexican American parents, and was born and raised in the Sonorita Barrio in South Phoenix. Inspired to write by a prophetic dream of her father, she believes that writing, like love, begins within, or it doesn’t start at all. For more, visit stellapopeduarte.com.
Mark Medoff
Mark Medoff received the Tony and Olivier Awards for CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD and was nominated for an Academy Award and a Writers Guild of America Best Adapted Screenplay Award for the film script of CHILDREN. He received an OBIE Award for WHEN YOU COMIN BACK, RED RYDER? Mark is a Distinguished Achievement Professor at New Mexico State University where he has been on faculty and an artist in residence since 1966. His most recent play, MARILEE AND BABY LAMB: THE ASSASSINATION OF AN AMERICAN GODDESS, is scheduled to open on Broadway in the 2017-18 season. He will direct. In the coming year, Mark will direct DECADES OF DIVAS, which he co-wrote with Oscar winning songwriter Franke Previte, and his own TIME AND CHANCE at the Axelrod Theater in Deal, NJ. CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD will be revived this summer at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and will move to Broadway in early 2017. Mark and his family have started The Hope E. Harrison Foundation to raise awareness and do research to end the chromosomal anomaly, Trisomy 18, which afflicts Mark’s two-year old granddaughter, Hope. A book, HOPE FULL: A RECKONING WITH THE UNIVERSE, will be forthcoming, proceeds to go to the foundation. A documentary, MODERN DAY MIRACLES: THE CURIOUS ART OF NUERO-ACUPUNCTURE, about the work of Drs. Jason and Linda Hao, has so far accompanied the Drs. Hao to their public speaking engagements in the USA, Canada, and China. The movie THE HEART OUTRIGHT, based on Mark’s 1992 play, directed by Mark’s son in law, Ross Marks, is out to film festivals and has just made a distribution arrangement. Mark and his wife of forty-four years, Stephanie, have three daughters and eight grandchildren.
Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca is principal scholar of the Chicano Renaissance and is considered founder of Chicano literary history with Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature, the first study in the field. His essay on The Chicano Renaissance is a landmark text in the Chicano literary movement.
Author of numerous books, monographs, studies and hundreds of scholarly, critical, public affairs and creative pieces, his articles, essays, fiction, and poetry appear in leading national and international publications.
Among many honors, awards, and distinctions, he is recipient of the 2007 Letras de Aztlan Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (Tejas Foco) for his lifetime work and achievement in Chicano scholarship and community activism and recipient of the 2005 Patricia and Rudolfo Anaya Critica Nueva Award from the University of New Mexico for his contributions to Chicano literary history, theory, and criticism.
Sharman Apt Russell
Sharman Apt Russell has published a dozen books translated into a dozen languages. Her Diary of a Citizen Scientist (OSU Press, 2014) won the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing and WILLA Award in Nonfiction. Her 2016 eco-sci-fi, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, and her 2015 YA, Teresa of the New World, both won multiple awards, including the Arizona Authors Award and New Mexico/Arizona Book Award. Sharman’s next book combines environmental and humanitarian concerns and is tentatively titled Within Our Grasp: Feeding the World’s Children for a Better and Greener Future (Pantheon, 2019). Sharman lives in Gila, New Mexico and teaches part-time at WNMU and Antioch University. For more information, go to www.sharmanaptrussell.com.
