Writing for Social Action Workshop with Poet Diana García at UTPA

Writing for Social Action Workshop with Poet Diana García 12noon-1:30pm, Wed. April 1st (for students, faculty, and community members), CAS 107.

Poetry reading by Diana García & reading by participants from the Writing for Social Action Workshop 6pm, Wed. April 1st, ENGR 1.300

Before Diana takes the stage, participants are invited to read a brief selection of their writing (in any genre) from the writing for social action workshop.

About Diana García: Born in a California migrant camp, at different times Diana García has been a single mother on welfare, a personnel manager, and a felony sentencing consultant. Her poetry collection, When Living Was a Labor Camp (U. of Arizona P.), received a 2001 American Book Award. Currently, she is an associate professor at California State University Monterey Bay where she coordinates the Creative Writing and Social Action Program.

Praise for When Living Was a Labor Camp:

"Throughout the book it is eminently clear that García intimately knows the migrant worker life. She widens this view gracefully and lyrically to honor and evoke the voices of those on the margins, especially women, the 'other Marías.' A lovely book." -North American Review

"Just a few words: Diana García's collection is a rare mix of literary power, hard-won truths, women's realities and soulful flames come burnin' out of the page into our consciousness. I haven't seen a book with these valencies since Lorna Dee Cervantes' break-through Emplumada! And she reminds us -- without bombast -- about this earth, its workers, its campesino childhoods, hungers and shames and incandescent liberations. Diana Garcia has lived many lives, for many lives -- and now it is her life-lines we can hold, for a moment at least, as 'birds of paradise/against a gold-lit world.' Gracias, Diana." - Juan Felipe Herrera

National Farmworker Awareness Week and National Poetry Month events. Sponsored by the Department of English (Service Learning, Creative Writing, and Guest Lecturer Committees) and the Cosecha Voices program. For more information, please contact Emmy Pérez at LPerez16@utpa.edu or 381-3435.