Hola & Upcoming Events

Bienvenidos to my little bloguito!

2011 was a whirlwind. In February, I moderated a panel of Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010 contributors Elisabeth Eaves, Alison Stein Wellner, and Johanna Gohmann at AWP in Washington DC; gave a keynote for the Amnesty International student chapter at  Mercer University in Macon, Georgia; and jetted off to Singapore to join an international panel of globe-trotters at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. I spent the spring teaching creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa and returned to Asia in May for Iowa’s Summer Overseas Writing Workshop in the Philippines. Over the summer, I taught an 8-week online Intro to Travel Writing class with Media Bistro as well as live classes at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference in Wyoming, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference in California, and Gemini Ink in San Antonio. Then I returned to Iowa City for my final academic year, and spoke at the University of North Carolina-Asheville in September.

As for 2012, I’ll be teaching a distance-learning class with writers in the USA and Mexico via the International Writing Program at Iowa this spring. I’ll also be presenting at AWP in Chicago and the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in March and NonfictioNow in Melbourne, Australia in November, and — with any luck — a Chicano lit conference in Toledo, Spain in May. Here’s hoping our paths cross somewhere along the way. Gracias!

Libro-Traficantes!

As y’all may have heard, Latino Studies has essentially been banned in the state of Arizona. My amazing friends at Nuestra Palabra, a literary arts organization in Houston, Texas, are currently organizing a Librotraficante caravan to Tucson to smuggle “wet-books” across the border. Author and activist Tony Diaz explains:

 

And here is the official press release:

HOUSTON, TEXAS - Local literary nonprofit Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say is organizing The Librotraficantes Banned Book Caravan from Houston, Texas to Tucson, Arizona leaving Houston on Monday, March 12 and culminating in Tucson, Arizona Saturday, March 17.

The caravan will be filled with authors and activists who will be taking banned books back into Arizona, to give to students.  The bus will include banned authors, new authors, as well as concerned advocates of First Amendment rights of Equal Protection and Freedom of Speech.

The Caravan will be making stops in Texas, New Mexico, and, of course, Arizona.

Banned writers have embraced the caravan and will participate along the route, including Mac Arthur Genius recipient Sandra Cisneros, who kicked off our fundraising efforts by making a generous donation; Guggenheim Fellow Dagoberto Gilb, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker and Harpers; and best selling author Luis Alberto Urrea, who was the first

Free Online Class!

Something exciting is brewing over here:

The International Writing Program at the University of Iowa has recently started hosting international distance-learning courses that pair classrooms from such far-flung areas as Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Egypt with Iowa City. I’ve just been invited to teach an online course on International Issues in Creative Nonfiction: Immigration with Mariana Martinez Estens, a journalist and poet from Tijuana, Mexico. It’s looking like I will have at least one slot available to offer readers of this blog.

Here are the deets:

As a class, we’ll be reading four books about immigration: Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea, What is the What, by Dave Eggers, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta, and Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. We’ll be writing brief (350 word) academic and creative responses for each book; writing two 5-6 page workshop essays; participating in two sessions of Elluminate (which is like Skype on steroids) with our colleagues in Tijuana (all of whom write and speak in English); and commenting on each other’s work. The creative responses will involve venturing out of your typical social sphere and into worlds previously unknown to you, via visits to ethnic markets, cultural festivals, places of worship, etc.

The class will begin the week of January 16 and run through May 13, or 16 weeks altogether, with a week off March 12-18 for Spring Break. Thanks to a grant from the US State Department (which views this as an experiment in democracy), this class is available free of charge for auditors (that is, those who will not be receiving academic credit from a university).

So, my friends! Who’s in? If you’d like to be considered, please email me via Facebook or stephanie at aroundthebloc dot com by January 3. Tell me about your interest in creative nonfiction as an art form and immigration as an issue, plus a bit about your availability during the spring semester (such as how many hours you’d be able to commit to the class per week). I’ll be able to invite at least one writer to participate.

Many thanks, happy holidays, and best wishes!