Explorations of Home: A Panel on the Latinx Diaspora in Poetry

Tuesday, December 3rd 6-8pm, in-person
San Antonio Public Library
Latino Collection & Resource Center
600 Soledad St., San Antonio, TX
Free and open to the public

This event, in partnership with the Library of America, will feature a panel of diverse poets who represent the breadth of the Latinx diaspora. The panel will discuss the facets and multiplicities of home, from ancestry and linguistics to shifting borders and generational wounds.

Featured authors are Jasminne Mendez, ire’ne lara silva, and Rod Carlos Rodriguez. They will read from their personal works and engage in a rich discussion with moderator Dr. Carmen Tafolla. Light refreshments will be served.

Panelist Bios

Jasminne Mendez is a Dominican-American poet, translator, playwright, audiobook narrator, and award-winning author of several books, including the Pura Belpre Honor Award-winning middle-grade novel in verse, Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial). Her other books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of Texas and the International Latino Book Awards. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alumni. She is the Program Director for the literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and she lives and works in Houston, TX.

Rod Carlos Rodriguez has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the UT–El Paso and is a Lecturer at UTSA’s Writing Program. He is an award-winning poet who has been writing for over 40 years. He has five books of poetry published including Cantos, Incandescent (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and A History of Echoes: Poems (Gival Press, 2024). He is the founder/chair of the Sun Poet’s Society, South Texas’s longest-running weekly open-mic poetry reading (1995-2022). He was nominated for the San Antonio Poet Laureate in April 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. He was the poetry editor for Ocotillo Review, a literary journal/periodical, and he was the editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar 2023 (Kallisto Gaia Press).

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections: furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers; two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos; a comic book,VENDAVAL; and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Ire’ne received the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. Her second collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Fall 2025.

Moderator

Dr. Carmen Tafolla is the author of over 40 books and the 2015 State Poet Laureate of Texas. Her award-winning books include The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans, Rebozos, Curandera, and Sonnets to Human Beings. Her writing has been recognized by the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies for work that “gives voice to the peoples and cultures of this land,” and her new novel-in-verse Warrior Girl was published by Penguin in 2023.

This program is presented as part of Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home, a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025, directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.