If you are a writer and publisher, there is a good chance that March means you’re getting ready for AWP. If you’re attending this year’s conference in Los Angeles and looking for Latinx panels, we have a list for you!
This list does not aim to capture the full scope of Latinx writers at AWP, but rather we want to highlight panels that discuss literature in relation to Latinidad and/or feature Letras Latinas collaborators. If you’d like to find the full list of AWP panels, visit the conference schedule on their website.
We hope to see you at our event “Poet Leaders: A Letras Latinas Reading & Discussion” on Saturday, March 29th at 1:45pm. This panel will feature Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Ysabel Y. González, and Sebastián Páramo, moderated by our own Brent Ameneyro. These three poets will share their experiences as literary citizens and leaders. They will open with a reading of their work and then participate in a conversation about their varied roles championing literature, challenges they faced, and ways to get involved in the literary community. Mark your calendar down for 1:45pm at the Petree Hall C, Level One at the Los Angeles Convention Center!
We hope you add a few of these panels to your AWP must-do list!
Plaza Letras Latinas will be at exhibit space 341 at the book fair. Come say hi!
Thursday, March 27
9:00am - 10:15
Creativity as Armor: Crafting Narratives of Power & Resilience
Moderator: Julissa Arce
Panelists: Christopher Rivas & Reyna Grande
Location: Room 403B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
This panel brings together a diverse panel of Latino screenwriters, cultural critics, and memoirists to explore how writing can serve as a powerful tool to challenge dominant narratives, amplify overlooked stories, and inspire collective action in troubling times. Panelists will share insights into their creative process, the joys and challenges of crafting their personal stories, and their approach to finding strength through their art.
10:35 - 11:50 AM
Across Borders: Latine Writers Respond to the Crackdown on Immigration
Moderator: Tess O'Dwyer
Panelists: Giannina Braschi, Mónica-Ramón Ríos, Carlos Labbé, & Frederick Luis Aldama
Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Latine writers read original pieces to respond to the recent immigration wave from South America. This session proposes that literature, specifically fiction and hybrid genres, illuminates how labeling the movement as a “crisis” economically manages and attacks one specific population: Spanish-speaking from the South of the Americas. We then reveal a long literary, geopolitical, racial, mythical, and classed connection between Latin America and the US.
3:20pm - 4:35pm
The Setting Gap: Deconstructing Patriarchal Environments Through World-Building
Moderator: Gloria Muñoz
Panelists: Nora Shalaway Carpenter, Alisa Alering, Tyler Gillespie, & Felicia Zamora
Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Setting is more than vibes. For BIPOC, female-identifying, and queer writers, it’s a means of entering spaces that have been historically inaccessible and prohibitive. From the margins, setting is political, and literary canons and societal gender norms have perpetuated these delineations. Authors from across genres discuss ways they build environments—real and fantastic—to close the setting gap, code-switch, raise social questions, and reckon with the gendered politics of how worlds are built.
Teaching Amidst Trauma: Practices for Our Times
Moderator: Miranda McLeod
Panelists: Diego Báez, Marcus Jackson, & Becca Klaver
Location: Room 502A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Creative writing classrooms can be repositories for artifacts of traumas both personal and public. As university instructors, how do we teach in a time of accelerating emergency? How can we effectively invite students into the time-honored tradition of making art in the face of existential crisis? How can we do so without turning workshop into group therapy? In this panel, we’ll share lesson designs, community practices, and tips for classroom management and self-care for teachers and learners.
Voices from the “Other” California: A Sense of Place—Belonging & Divisions
Moderator: Mas Masumoto
Panelists: Juan Felipe Herrera, Isabel Quintero, Susan Straight, & Lee Herrick
Location: Room 515A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Often lost and overlooked are the hidden and “other” voices—specifically from Inland California. Voices of outsiders that are marginalized: rural, working class, mixed-race families, agrarian, communities of color—all explore a new meaning of diversity. A unique sense of place and history are woven into the voices from these hidden perspectives—with a brutal honesty from those who live in a different world in the shadows of the established. Connect with revealing legacies.
5:00pm - 6:15pm
Latinx Writers Caucus
Moderator: féi hernandez
Panelists: Amy Alvarez, Claudia Castro Luna, Amairani Pérez Chamu, & Karina Muñiz-Pagán
Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Latinx writers are becoming increasingly visible in literary spaces. However, there is still work to be done to address inequalities in access and visibility. The Latinx Writers Caucus creates space for new, emerging, and established writers of varied Latinx identities to network, discuss obstacles to publication (e.g., active oppression and the cultural marginalization of Latinx writers), and discuss panel and event planning that will increase Latinx participation at future AWP conferences.
Friday, March 28
9:00am - 10:15am
The Art of Noticing in the Age of Disappearance
Moderator: Brittany Torres Rivera
Panelists: Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Harryette Mullen, Mai Der Vang, Robin Walter
Location: Room 403A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
This panel brings together writers whose new works in various genres perform intense observations of the world. The panelists discuss how careful acts of noticing—as in poems devoted to an endangered mammal in Laos and Vietnam and in a novel that begins with a sick tree in a California garden—give them an entry to contend with environmental exploitation and human isolation. They ask, What are the limits of language in describing and repairing our relationship to nature and to one another?
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project
Moderator: Kendra Sullivan
Panelists: Joseph Caceres, Lois Griffith, Vallerie Matos, & Jonathan Toro
Location: Room 409AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
This panel focuses on the hybrid literary works created by writers working in an Afro-Caribbean organization dedicated to preserving the fifty-year legacy of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe—an Afro-Puerto Rican cultural organization located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side—from being elided by revisionist history. These writers will discuss the difficulties of producing work that documents the lives of those silenced by colonial violence while highlighting the importance of such work in liberatory projects.
10:35am - 11:50am
Library of America & Rigoberto González Present: Latinx Poetry Then & Now
Moderator: Rigoberto González
Panelists: Brandon Som , Laurie Ann Guerrero, Alexandra Lytton Regalado , & Eduardo Corral
Location: Concourse Hall 150 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center
Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology is an unprecedented collection that brings together more than 180 poets whose work testifies to the multifaceted past and present of Latinx poetry—its linguistic inventiveness, and its critical reimagining of questions of exile, language, ancestry, identity, and place. In a reading and conversation moderated by editor Rigoberto González, four poets read from the anthology and discuss the ongoing impact of Latinx poetry on American literature.
A Desert Full of Color: Creating & Supporting BIPOC Spaces in LA
Moderator: Peter Woods Panelists: Sarah Rafael Garcia, Romeo Guzman, & traci kato-kiriyama
Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Can a handful of established institutions serve the communities of a sprawling desert properly? Should BIPOC talent and labor be used to fight for access to PWI, or are we better served by creating and building our own spaces? Four writers, publishers, teachers, and community builders from the Los Angeles area discuss who benefits from inclusion into historically white spaces and whose work gets co-opted and ultimately wasted when BIPOC communities don’t build their own institutions.
The Translator’s Note: Bridging Linguistic & Cultural Chasms, Sponsored by ALTA
Moderator: Blas Falconer Panelists: Sandra Alcosser, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Wayne Miller, & Armen Davoudian
Location: Room 514, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
The Translator’s Note is an indispensable companion to poetry in translation, acquainting readers with new poets, helping editors to evaluate poems, positioning a poet’s significance within a literary landscape, defining challenges in a particular piece, and more. Translating from Albanian, French, Persian, Portuguese, and Spanish, our panelists will address how the Translator’s Note bridges linguistic and cultural chasms while fostering an understanding and appreciation for diverse voices.
12:10pm - 1:10pm
Concatenations of LA
Moderator: Ruben Martinez
Panelists: Vickie Vertiz, Alex Espinoza, & Raquel Gutierrez
Location: Room 409AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Our point of departure is author Raquel Gutiérrez’s seminal essay “A Concatenation of Sprawls,” which explores the ’90s queer Latine underground in LA as a site of creative liberation on the margins of the raced, heteronormativized city. We propose to explore literatures that reveal the under-, alt-, DIY, and organic communities that gather in clubs, ethnic enclaves, and other diverse subcultures. We bring together a poet (Vickie Vértiz), novelist (Alex Espinoza), and essayist (Raquel Gutiérrez), all of whom have intimate knowledge of the city, to conjure an oft hidden geography.
1:45pm - 3:00pm
Like a Hammer: Poets On Mass Incarceration Book Launch, Sponsored by the University of Arizona Poetry Center
Moderator: Diana Marie Delgado Panelists: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Angel Nafis, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, & Tongo Eisen-Martin
Location: Petree Hall D, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center
Join us for launch reading of Like a Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration, an anthology of poems that unearths the shared traumas produced by America’s carceral system. These powerful poems of witness address the oppressive systems that define the US prison-industrial complex, exposing cracks in a criminal justice system that often feels unchangeable. The impact of this system reverberates across generations. The poets gathered here foreground the real experiences of those affected, challenging dominant narratives, exposing injustice, and serving as a fulcrum for organizing communities. Like a Hammer explores how art and imagination can be vehicles for endurance, offering hope to envision a better future.
Fragmentos: Reclaiming Hybridity & Fragmentation Through Latine Narratives
Moderator: Ofelia Montelongo Panelists: Norma Cantu, Gloria Muñoz, Emilly Prado, & Viktoria Valenzuela
Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Latin American literature has a rich history of fragmented storytelling paved by Borges, Luiselli, and other contemporary Latines. From the borderlands to Colombia, authors from the Latine diaspora are reframing Latin America’s rich history of fragmented storytelling. Fragmentation is a means of self-preservation to stitch back and forth through time and space, echolocate personal truth and examine histories, and help us protect ourselves while writing through layers of colonization.
Gil Cuadros: Queer Literary Love & AIDS in Latino/Chicano LA
Moderator: Terry Wolverton Panelists: Pablo Alvarez, Omar Gonzalez, Kevin Martin, & Amy Scholder
Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Trailblazing writer Gil Cuadros left an indelible mark on queer and Latinx literature with his groundbreaking 1994 book, City of God. Cuadros’s essential work continues to inspire and challenge. In 2024, City Lights released My Body Is Paper, a poignant collection of Cuadros’s previously unpublished writings. Powerful themes permeate Cuadros’s writing, including his unflinching portrayal of HIV/AIDS, his profound exploration of Chicanx identity, and the transformative potential of love and desire.
3:20-4:35pm
On the Line: Ethical Approaches to Writing from the US-Mexico Border
Moderator: Jo Blair Cipriano Panelists: Logan Phillips, Sophia Terazawa , & Raquel Gutierrez
Location: Room 404AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
As writers, we are often told to be a “voice for the voiceless”—but what does this mean exactly? In this panel, award-winning alumni of University of Arizona’s Southwest Field Studies in Writing—a summer research, writing, and teaching program that sends fellows to collaborate with nonprofit community partners—will discuss the importance of reciprocal learning in art making, writing in the borderlands, and how, no matter our location, grappling with borders affects each one of us as writers and as people.
Poets in the City of Movies
Moderator: Suzanne Lummis Panelists: William Archila, Dorothy Barresi, Ramon Garcia, & Ron Koertge
Location: Room 502A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
As a complement to the anthology to be published in 2025, Poetry Goes to the Movies (Pacific Coast Poetry Series, imprint of Beyond Baroque Books), five longtime poets and teachers/professors of poetry in Los Angeles will explore the potential power of movies to generate poems—via visuals, scenes, theme, dialogue, sound, mood, and other cinematic elements—as well as the occasional influence imparted by the surrounding movie industry on our poetry.
Beyond Our Labor: Writing Our Lives as Farmworkers
Moderator: Miguel M. Morales
Panelists: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Aideed Medina, Manuel Muñoz, Oswaldo Vargas
Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Driven to honor farmworker creativity and resiliency, especially in the current political climate, contributors to The Common magazine’s Farmworker Portfolio (issue 26) invite you to witness our farmworker pasts and to explore and celebrate texts that influence our writings and pedagogical choices in traditional and nontraditional classrooms. We’re diverse in age, education, location, orientation, and stages of our writing careers. We’ll also share our #FarmworkerLit inspirations and aspirations.
Saturday, March 29
9:00am - 10:15am
Peeling the Layers of Race & Identity Through Narrative Craft
Moderator: Diana Diaz
Panelists: Grisel Yolanda Acosta, Edward Gunawan, Christine H Lee, & Vincent Toro
Location: Room 402AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
“The ethnic writer creates not only literature but also people.” —Toni Morrison
When writing characters outside of our own race, writers have to pay particular attention to ensure characters are three-dimensional and go beyond stereotypes. We all know that we should avoid two-dimensional characters when presenting the ethnicity or identity of characters. How can writers push past imago (the first impression) and reveal the nuanced complexity of race and identity as it serves the narrative arc?
Beyond Beaches & Colonialism: Writers from the Caribbean Diaspora
Moderator: Tanya Rey
Panelists: Gabriela Garcia, Lilliam Rivera, & Yalitza Ferreras
Location: Room 404AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
One of the most ethnically diverse regions worldwide, the Caribbean is an area defined by colonization, immigration, and a history of violence. As writers from the diaspora, how do we contend with that history in an American context? Whose stories are we beholden to, and how do we balance the responsibility to represent our communities with that of representing ourselves? Writers from various diasporas read from their work and discuss how these histories and identities inform their choices.
Feeling FATastic: The Poetics of Pleasure, Sexuality & Liberation
Moderator: Claudia Cortese Panelists: Diamond Forde, Ysabel Y. González, Omotara James, & Emilia Phillips
Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
This panel explores the craft of writing fat pleasure and joy. Narratives about fat people often center harm—eating disorders, bullying, body shaming. These topics are important components of the fat experience, but reducing people to their trauma is ultimately dehumanizing. The panelists will discuss how to use sensory details, musicality, voice, lineation, and storytelling to write poems that celebrate the pleasures of eating, sexuality, embodiment, belonging.
10:35am - 11:50am
The Defiance of Pink Poetry Books
Moderator: Xochitl Bermejo
Panelists: Chen Chen, Anatalia Vallez, Zefyr Lisowski, & Cathy Linh Che
Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
To see the world through rose-colored glasses means to have a positive outlook that may be naive or weak. But in a violent world, it is an act of defiance to choose love and joy over alienation and uncertainty. Celebrating titles that feature the color pink on their covers, poets will read work that highlights the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and identity, and discuss how pink came to be a prominent element of their book, and what the color means to them and their writing.
Out of Many, One: Writers of Color Writing the Multiple-POV Novel
Moderator: Kimberly Garza Panelists: Rubén Degollado, Jonathan Escoffery, Sidik Fofana, & LaToya Watkins
Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Even in an industry that prizes novels over story collections, many writers of color turn to novels in stories, books composed of multiple storylines. What can the multi–point of view book offer to us—and our stories about family, diaspora, and community—that maybe no other form can? Fiction authors with acclaimed multi-POV books discuss the powers and pitfalls of the mosaic novel, crafting distinct voices and characters, representation, and creating a larger narrative out of many.
12:10pm - 1:25pm
“Traduttore, Traditore!”: Poets on Translation
Moderator: John Murillo
Panelists: Shangyang Fang, Forrest Gander., Valzhyna Mort, & Mary Jo Bang
Location: Room 407, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
In his 2004 memoir If This Be Treason, translator Gregory Rabassa describes the act of translating, at least in part, as an act of betrayal. Betrayal of language, author, and self. Was he right? If so, is this especially true when translating poems? This panel uses Rabassa’s argument as a jumping-off point to discuss the joys, challenges, and . . . impossibility? . . . of translation. The five poet-translators will be reading from recently published translations from Chinese, Italian, Russian, and Spanish texts.
1:45pm - 3:00pm
Poet Leaders: A Letras Latinas Reading & Discussion
Moderator: Brent Ameneyro
Panelists: Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Ysabel Y. González, & Sebastián Páramo
Location: Petree Hall C, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center
How do you maintain an artistic practice while being in a leadership role like poetry editor at a publisher, founder of a literary journal, executive director, or senior poetry consultant for a major poetry festival? Three poets share their experiences as literary citizens and leaders. Opening with a reading of their work, they will then participate in a conversation about their varied roles championing literature, challenges they faced, and ways to get involved in the literary community.
3:20pm - 4:35pm
What You’ve Heard Isn’t True: Crafting New Salvadoran Myths & Futurities
Moderator: Janel Pineda
Panelists: Ruben Reyes Jr., Gina María Balibrera , Leticia Hernández-Linares, & Reyes Ramirez
Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Contemporary writers of the Salvadoran diaspora use the speculative—the imaginative—to parse through the urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the US and El Salvador. By collapsing past and present, and blending history and mythology, these writers force us to ask, What have readers misunderstood or overlooked about the country and its diaspora? If much of El Salvador’s past was documented by outsiders, its future will be written by these speculative writers and their contemporaries.
Not Your Papi’s Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope
Moderator: Sara Rivera
Panelists: Matthew Goodwin, Rolando Lopez, Richie Narvaez, & Lesley Tellez
Location: Room 503, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center
Not Your Papi’s Utopia (Mouthfeel Press, 2024) is the final installment of our Latinx speculative fiction trilogy. The panel, composed of two editors and three authors, will discuss the goal of the anthology to envision alternate forms of utopian thinking that focuses not on a perfect society but on a society trying to be more in harmony with the environment and with more equitable political systems. The discussion will be followed by fiction and poetry readings from the book.