R166. Writing on the line

E143-144, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Thursday, March 28, 2019
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

On the border between Mexico and the United States lies the University of Texas, El Paso, where writers from all over the Americas come to earn a bilingual MFA in creative writing, the very first university to offer this degree. On this panel, we discuss what it’s like to function on the line between Latin America and the United States, the line between languages and between metaphor and reality. In Mexico, “la línea” is what people call the border. We will talk about writing on the line.


Participants

Moderator:

Daniel Chacón is author of five books, including The Cholo Tree, And The Shadows Took Him, and Hotel Juarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops. He won the Pen Oakland, American Book Award, and the Hudson Prize. He edited the posthumous poems of Andrés Montoya, A Jury of Trees and hosts Words on a Wire.

Nelson Cárdenas is the author of two poetry collections, The Warrior, and Days of the Sword. His book Island that Doesn’t Exist: Cuban Writers in the Diaspora won the National Literary Award “Pinos Nuevos” in Cuba in 2002. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing at The University of Texas at El Paso.

Silvias Aguilar received her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. She is a bilingual author. Her work has been included in anthologies of Korea, Peru, México, and the US. She currently coordinates of CasaOctavia, a writing residency for women in El Paso, TX.

Alessandra Narváez-Varela is a poet and creative writing instructor at the University of Texas at El Paso, with a Bilingual MFA in Creative Writing from the same institution. Her, a chapbook that explores the modern symbiosis between girls and women, is her most recent publication.

Andrea Cote-Botero is the author of the poetry collections Puerto Calcinado, La Ruina que nombro, and Chinatown 24 hour. She has also published books of prose: A Nude Photographer: A Biography of Tina Modotti and Blanca Varela or Writing From Solitude. She is Assistant Professor at the bilingual creative writing MFA at University of Texas at El Paso.

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