RSVP Here
A Free Monthly Online Reading Series from Writing Workshops Dallas & Gemini Ink
(Zoom Meetings Monthly @ 7pm CST; RSVP for Zoom invite)
Up Next on September 15th, 2021 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
We’re reading and discussing Octavio Quintanilla‘s collection If I Go Missing. This session will be moderated by Natalia Treviño, author of VirginX & Lavando la Dirty Laundry.
UPCOMING AUTHORS AND TITLES
October 20; Sherry Kafka Wagner, Hannah Jackson, with guest moderator Naomi Shihab Nye.
November 17: Edward Vidaurre, Book TBD
December 15: Sergio Troncoso, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son
January 20, 2022: Marisol Cortez, Luz at Midnight, Winner of the 2021 Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction by the Texas Institute of Letters
February 16: Deb Olin Ferth, Barn 8
March 16: Mike Soto
April 20: Barbara Ras, The Blues of Heaven
May 18: Johnnie Bernhard, Book TBD
THE PITCH
Unplug from the outside world and JOIN us at The Big Texas Read (TBTR) brought to you by Writing Workshops Dallas and Gemini Ink. As featured in Poets&Writers, Forbes, The Dallas Morning News, San Antonio Express-News, U.S. News & World Report, San Francisco Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Houston Chronicle, and Texas Highways, we’ll be reading one work of prose or poetry written by a Texas author every month—with Zoom author chats and Q&A’s. It’s a big virtual book club and we’d love for you to join us!
FREE GIVEAWAYS
Keep a lookout for giveaways that come with being a book lover and taking part in The Big Texas Read, from free online WWD and Gemini Ink workshops to manuscript consultations. Help us celebrate the diverse literary voices of our state, and we’ll keep you company with great Texas authors and like-minded fellow readers. What could be better than a good book, a dynamic discussion, and meeting new friends?
PARTNER BOOKSTORES
We’re grateful to partner with independent bookstores Interabang Books in Dallas and The Twig Book Shop in San Antonio for The Big Texas Read. Order your book directly from either bookstore and have it delivered to your front door!
PREVIOUS AUTHORS/TITLES INCLUDE
Nan Cuba, Body and Bread
Cliff Hudder, Pretty Enough for You
Rebekah Manley, Alexandra and the Awful, Awkward, No Fun, Truly Bad Dates A Picture Book Parody for Adults
Jenny Browne, Fellow Travelers: New and Selected Poems (TCU Poet Laureate Series)
Amanda Eyre Ward, The Jetsetters
Heather Harper Ellett, Ain’t Nobody Nobody.
Andrea Vocab Sanderson, She Lives in Music
Antonio Ruiz-Camacho: Barefoot Dogs
Poet Wendy Barker: Gloss
Debut Novelist Fowzia Karimi: Above Us the Milky Way
Edgar-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale: Edge of Dark Water
Winner of the Iowa Prize for Nonfiction Kendra Allen: When You Learn the Alphabet
2020 Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Pérez: With The River on Our Face
New York Times Bestselling Author Kathleen Kent: The Dime & The Burn
Critically Acclaimed Novelist David Samuel Levinson: Tell Me How This Ends Well
Octavio Quintanilla
September 15, 7pm CST
UP NEXT:
We’re chatting with Octavio Quintanilla discussing his collection of poems If I Go Missing, and his chapbook of frontextos, Poem Machine, with guest moderator Natalia Treviño.
THE BOOK
An astonishing debut, If I Go Missing is timely, fearless, and necessary. In these poems, Octavio Quintanilla measures displacement with language and grapples with the longing to begin anew, to return to what was left unsaid, undone. Redemption is not always possible in the geography of these poems, but there is always a sense of hope. And by this pulse we are guided, the poet’s unmistakable voice that, finally, clears the way so we may find our bearing.
ABOUT OCTAVIO QUINTANILLA
Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014), and served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, Existere: A Journal of Art & Literature, and elsewhere. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published in Poetry Northwest, Gold Wake Live, Newfound, Chachalaca Review, Chair Poetry Evenings, Red Wedge, The Museum of Americana, About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, The Windward Review, Tapestry, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, & The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas.
Octavio’s visual work has been exhibited at the Southwest School of Art, Presa House Gallery, Equinox Gallery, UTRGV-Brownsville, the Weslaco Museum, Aanna Reyes Gallery in San Antonio, TX, Our Lady of the Lake University, AllState Almaguer art space in Mission, El Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, The Walker’s Gallery in San Marcos, TX, and in the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center / Black Box Theater in Austin, TX. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and poetry editor for The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism & for Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature & Arts Magazine. Octavio teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.
ABOUT NATALIA TREVINO
Born in Mexico, Natalia Treviño is the author of VirginX (Finishing Line Press) and Lavando la Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press), which has been translated to Albanian and Macedonian and published in Macedonia (2021). Her work has won several awards including the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Literary Award from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, the Menada Literary Award from Macedonia and several others. Natalia is a graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She works as a Professor of English and as an affiliate Mexican American studies faculty member at Northwest Vista College. Her publications appear in Open Plaza, Plume, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Bordersenses, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, The Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, and several others. Her work also appears in several anthologies including Mirrors Beneath the Earth (Curbstone Press), Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out (Flowersong Press), Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (Cutthroat Press), and most recently in Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Great Southwest (University of New Mexico).
