Here’s our latest press release, discussing the festival theme, “Textures y Sabores”! You can download the press release in Word or PDF format on our Press page.
The Southwest Festival of the Written Word, downtown Silver City NM’s first literary festival, will take place Friday September 27-Sunday September 29. The theme of the Festival is “Textures y Sabores”, reports Jeannie Miller, public information chair of the Festival.
“Textures,” Miller explains, “was suggested by Joe Wade who is the co-owner of JW Art Gallery and a member of the Festival organizing committee.” The “y Sabores,” which in Spanish means “and Tastes” or “and Flavors,” was a natural addition to the theme,” adds Peter Garcia, Festival coordinator. “Together these words describe the wonderful atmosphere created when more than 50 writers, agents and publishers gather to participate in over 35 events.”
The Festival was created to highlight writers who live and write in the Southwest. More than half the Festival presenters live in the wider Silver City area, while the rest are from Texas, Arizona, Colorado and other parts of New Mexico. It is free and open to the public except where noted in the schedule of events.
The two keynote speakers, Ana Castillo and Denise Chavez, rank among the best novelists of America, according to Garcia, and their excellence comes in part because they have remained true to their roots and the rich idioms in the Mexican American communities of New Mexico, far west Texas and Chicago
Orlando White, an award-winning Navajo poet, and Layli Long Soldier, a Lakota poet and artist, who both write in English but use their original languages to add an underlying meaning to their poetry, will read at the Festival. They will also participate in a discussion of multicultural writing along with Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, WNMU Scholar-in-Residence who expanded his distinguished career in English literature to become the founder of the study of Chicano literary history, and JJ Wilson, WNMU Writer-in-Residence, an author of over a dozen books about language learning and teaching as well as a short story author of note in Great Britain.
Over the next three months, the Southwest Festival of the Written Word will be issuing press releases and information about the speakers and events scheduled for the big weekend. “Our website contains speaker bios, listings of their works, our blog, and of course, the Festival schedule,” says Miller. “Folks can also sign up, through the website, to be on our email lists.”
“The most eloquent description of “Textures y Sabores” can be found on our home page at www.swwordfiesta.org ” says Miller. It reads “Living under a wide sky, turquoise bright, in a land where crinkled mountains rise purple and brown behind stretches of grass or cacti, some write of their days. Living in that crease where the past and present meet, where English and Spanish and languages of the indigenous meld, some write of their encounters. The Festival celebrates those who write in or about the Southwest, and brings together their readers to touch the rough and smooth of their words, to taste the fire and cool of our written life.”
Jeannie A. Miller
Publicity Chair for Southwest Festival of the Written Word