S233. The Challenges and Rewards of Transnational Bilingual Writing Workshops
Saturday, March 30, 2019
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
Building bridges rather than walls over the last decade, the University of Texas at El Paso bilingual MFA has created a grand experiment in bilingualism, challenging artificial boundaries between countries, peoples, and languages, producing award-winning writers in both Spanish and English, expanding MFA programs’ reach in the U.S. and throughout the Americas. This panel discusses the practical challenges and rewards of acquiring greater proficiency in a second language in the first bilingual MFA program in the world.
Participants
Moderator:
Lex Williford has won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the 10th Annual Rose Metal Chapbook Contest. Coeditor with Michael Martone of The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction and Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Nonfiction, he teaches in University of Texas at El Paso's bilingual and online MFA programs.
Irma Nikicicz is a graduate student of the Bilingual Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Chandra Edwards-Cottingham is currently a graduate student from Texas, studying in UTEP's Bilingual MFA program.
Jesus Peña is a second-year MFA writing student at the University of Texas at El Paso. He currently teaches Rhetoric and Writing Studies.
Maria Lorena Sosa
