Alfredo Vea

Alfredo Véa was born in the desert outside of Phoenix, but not in America. His grandfather was a Yaqui Indian, his grandmother was a Spanish-Mexican curandera who had played piano in silent movie theaters. Their grass covered adobe house stood at the epicenter of hundreds of tarpaper shacks built by Okies and Arkies. There were Apaches, Tarahumara, Navajo, Hindus and black folk everywhere, waiting for trucks to take them to the cotton fields. While his mother barely endured life in this impoverished Babel, her son lived in a wonderland. He luxuriated in the sound of Uto-aztecan, Athabascan, Dravidian and drawl—and the sounds of bible thumping and jive. After ten years or so he was dragged away to work on the migratory labor circuit in California, the land of stucco houses and aluminum window frames. All of it was drudgery until he began working in vineyards. Then he was ripped away from the vines to become a soldier, enslaved in Vietnam. Today, he is an attorney in San Francisco. If you ask him who he is he will never say “lawyer” or “writer.” Touch him and you will find that his skin is adobe. In his dreams, there are goats scuffling about on the roof and he and his grandfather are asleep on a cot under the stars.

Living Writers is a series of events that are free to students and the public, and happens every Thursday night from 6-7:45pm in the Humanities Lecture Hall, room 206. This series will be focusing on fiction writers as well as filmmakers. It’s going to be an exciting series and we hope to see you there!  For more details, please email us at cwintern@gmail.com

Living Writers Fall Schedule 2016

9/22 No reading

9/29 Chanan Tigay

10/6 Jennifer Chang

10/13 Michelle Tea

10/20 Alfredo Vea

10/27 Elizabeth Willis

11/3 No reading

11/10 Peter Orner

11/17 No reading

11/24—Thanksgiving

12/1 Student Reading

Readings sponsored by The Humanities Division, The Porter Hitchcock Poetry Fund, The Literature Department and Poets and Writers Inc.