The Creative Writing Program presents Veronica Reyes & Javier Huerta in the Winter 2015 Living Writers Series.

Verónica Reyes is a Chicana feminist jota poet from East Los Angeles, California. She earned her BA from California State University, Long Beach and her MFA from University of Texas, El Paso. She scripts poetry for the people. Her poems give voice to all her communities: Chicanas/os, immigrants, Mexicanas/os, and la jotería. Reyes has won AWP’s Intro-Journal Project, an Astraea Lesbian Foundation Emerging Artist award, and was a Finalist for Andrés Montoya Poetry award. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Feminist Studies, ZYZZYZVA, The New York Quarterly, Ms. Magazine (Online), and The Minnesota Review. She is a proud member of Macondo Writers’ Workshop.

Her first poetry book, Chopper! Chopper! Poetry from Bordered Lives (Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press 2013), has won Best Poetry from International Latino Book Awards 2014, Best Poetry from Golden Crown Literary Society Awards 2014, Goldie award, and was a Finalist for Lesbian Poetry from Lambda Literary Awards 2014.

Javier O. Huerta is the author of Some Clarifications y otros poemas (Arte Publico 2007), which received the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from UC Irvine, and American Copia: An Immigrant Epic (Arte Publico 2012). His poems have recently been anthologized in American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011, and Everyman’s Library Art and Artists: Poems. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Winter 2015 Living Series:

January 15: Cherrie Moraga, poet/playwright

January 22: Veronica Reyes & Javier Huerta, poets

January 29: Korimar Press, Lorenzo Herrera Y Lozano (publisher) & Maya Chincilla (poet)

February 5: Rigoberto Gonzalez, poet

February 12: Luis Alfaro, performance artist/playwright

February 19: John Jota Leanos, filmmaker

February 26: Anita Hill, attorney

March 5: Maceo Montoya, fiction writer

March 12: student reading

The Living Writers Series is a free and public event held Thursdays, 6:00-7:45 pm in Humanities Lecture Hall 206. Click here for more information, or email ktyamash@ucsc.edu.