Latinx Poetry Panel & Reading: “Creating in Resistance”

In celebration of National Poetry Month, join us for an inspiring afternoon featuring ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, Eddie Vega, San Antonio Poet Laureate, and Saúl Hernández, a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, who will share their powerful, moving work during a poetry reading, panel discussion, and Q&A centered on themes inspired by the recently published Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. This special event, in partnership with Library of America and with support from Humanities Texas, promises to be a captivating exploration of culture and artistic expression.

This event program, sponsored by SAC Mexican American Studies, is presented as part of “Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home,” a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025, directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.

Light refreshments will be served.

Poet Bios

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, a comic book, VENDAVAL, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Her second short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Fall 2025. http://www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com

Eddie Vega is a poet, storyteller, and educator. The author of Chicharra Chorus (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and Somos Nopales (FlowerSong Press, 2024), his poetry also appears in public spaces in San Antonio, TX. He is the editor of Asina is How We Talk, a collection of Tejano poetry. A Macondo Workshop Fellow, Vega directs the Mouth Dakota Poetry Project, a biweekly open mic, and currently serves as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Antonio.

Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, TX who was raised by former undocumented parents. Saúl has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. He is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Saúl’s debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is out now (March 2024), University of Wisconsin Press. He's the winner of both the 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize judged by Joy Priest & the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize judged by Victoria Chang. Saúl is a 2024 Finalist for the Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize & Best of The Net. Saúl’s work is forthcoming/featured in the American Poetry Review, Sundog Lit, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Literary Hub, Columbia Journal, Pleiades, Split This Rock & elsewhere. He's a Macondista, a 2021 Tin House Alum, & a 2024 Lambda Literary Fellow.