The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Carmen Calatayud

Join us on Wednesday, Dec. 18th, 2024 via Zoom for a conversation with Carmen Calatayud, author of This Tangled Body. Moderated by Francisco Aragón.

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This Tangled Body reads as surreal poetic memoir, navigating family history, war, migration, and the grit of relationships. Through lyrical language, the poet searches for ways to rescue a body that knows pain, addiction, and generational trauma. Elegies, love letters, and concussions cross paths here, along with planets and stars, demonstrating that the potential to heal is possible when raw truth and grace are present. Calatayud’s willingness to face the land of the dead and cross all borders is on full display. As she invites us to “leave this continent and/light the path behind us on fire,” her poetry insists we return to love and love hard.

Carmen Calatayud is the daughter of immigrants: A Spanish father and Irish mother. Her book This Tangled Body was published by FlowerSong Press, in conjunction with Letras Latinas, in 2024. Her first book In the Company of Spirits (Press 53) was a runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award and a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Calatayud is a Larry Neal Poetry Award winner and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.

Francisco Aragón is the author of three books of poetry, including After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and Puerta de Sol (2005).  He’s also the editor of, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007). His more than twenty anthology publications include Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (2024); Queer Nature: An Ecoqueer Poetry Anthology (2022) and Why To These Rocks: 50 Years of Poems from the Community of Writers (2021). His poems and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals, both print and online. A native of San Francisco, CA, he is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. He is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he teaches courses in Latinx poetry and creative writing, and directs Letras Latinas, their literary initiative. He has read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, and the Dodge Poetry Festival. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net