Essentially Poetic: An Essential Voices Monthly Reading Series for Community Building, April 2024
Register today for our next installment of Essentially Poetic Reading Series on Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 7:00 PM CST
Essentially Poetic: An Essential Voices Reading Series Community Building is a curation of poets, artists, essayists, novelists, educators, and everyday individuals whose deemed their voice essential, their work necessary, and their compassion for community building contagious and inspiring. This space is free of judgement and hate, and is a space for writers, readers, and admirers to come together to listen and uplift one another in a creative, poetic, and intentional online space.
Essentially Poetic is dedicated to amplifying essential voices throughout our world. By creating an online environment, we can reach beyond geographical borders and barriers. The essential voice echoes loud and translates intuitively. Join us this month as we come together to celebrate featured readers and artists and listen to their poetic and essential voice.
Our April Essentially Poetic Featured Readers:
Angelina Sáenz is an award-winning educator and a poet whose work focuses on memory, mujeres, and motherhood. She is a UCLA Writing Project fellow, an alumna of the VONA/Voices Workshop for Writers of Color and a Macondo Writer’s Workshop Fellow. Her poetry has appeared in venues such as Diálogo, Split this Rock, Out of Anonymity, Angels Flight Literary West, Every Other, Cockpit Revue Paris and The Acentos Review. Her debut book of poetry Edgecliff was released in winter of 2021 with FlowerSong Press. Maestra is her second collection.
Daniel Romo is the author of Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), Apologies in Reverse (FutureCycle Press 2019), and other books. His work can be found in The Los Angeles Review, MAYDAY, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, teaches, and rides his bikes in Long Beach, CA. More at danieljromo.com.
Born and raised in the desert of central Arizona, Andrea Hernandez Holm is a published poet and scholar. Her first collection of poetry, Not Enough, Too Much, was released from FlowerSong Press in February 2024. Her poetry has appeared Generations Literary Journal, Anacua Literary Arts Journal; Power of the Storm; Our Spirit, Our Reality; Soñadores—We came to Dream; Poetry as Resistance, and Caja de Resistencia. She also has poems forthcoming in Cuthroat, Somos Xicanas, and Teaching for Change.
Andrea explores identity, relationships, and place through her creative writing and academic research. Andrea's focus is on Borderlands writing, storytelling, and knowledge-keeping.
She explores how storytelling at the intersections of identity is an act of resistance, decolonization, and movement toward social justice.
Andrea holds both a doctoral and master's degree in Mexican American Studies and a master's degree in American Indian Studies. She is also a writing specialist and has assisted emerging and established academic writers in developing their voices for 20 years. She currently directs an academic writing support center at a Research 1 university.
cf espinoza is a writer and music producer creating along the vibrant US/Mexico Border. His debut poetry collection “How to Lie to a Customs Agent” won the 2021 Southwest Book Award. His novel “The Sacred History of Braulio Cantero” was recently published by FlowerSong Press. espinoza’s work appears in VICE, Words on a Wire, The Smithsonian Museum of The American Latino Center, Accentos Review, and BorderSenses. He was a featured performer at the Rasquatche Festival, Together We Will Be a Song a Celebration of Andres Montoya’s Life, and the Border Tuner / Sintonizador Fronterizo. He is the editor of the Barrio Panther Lit. Magazine and works as the development coordinator at The El Paso Museum of History.
