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 to enthusiastically support the project through Twitter.

The caravan is intended to:

1. Raise awareness of the suspension of the Mexican-American Studies Program and the removal of banned books.
2. Promotion of banned authors and their contributions to American Literature, Non-Fiction and Poetry.
3. Celebrate diversity: Children of the American Dream must unite to preserve the civil rights of all Americans.

Founded in 1998, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say has gone from the party hall of Chapultepec Restaurant to Exhibit Hall F of the George R. Brown Convention Center. Today, the entire city is our forum. When we began, we were told that there was not an audience for Latino literature. We are thrilled to say that today the largest book events in Houston are Latino events. We are proud to bring you Houston’s contribution to the Latino Literary Renaissance. 

For more details, contact Tony Diaz at 713-867-8943 or AztecMuse at aol dot com. Que vivan los Librotraficantes!

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!

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!

Frederico Vigil is afraid of heights.

“When I first went up here to paint the ceiling, I would clench the bottom with my toes como chango, like a monkey. I clenched so tight, my two big toenails popped off.”

A scissor-lift ascended through the middle of the watchtower. The enormity of Vigil’s latest work—a four-thousand-square-foot fresco depicting three thousand years of Latino history—became even more apparent from an elevation. There was Benito Juárez. A steam train blazing out of California. Oxen pulling carts along the Camino Real. A smirking Cervantes. Each image gleamed as if painted a moment ago, in bold, gestural brushstrokes.

At thirty-seven feet, the lift began to sway.

Vigil was fifty-five when he started this project. Good timing, he said: he might not have the stamina to do it today. It’s been a rough decade. He divorced for the second time. His baby brother died, and Vigil, while grieving, developed Bell’s palsy. Although the fresco has been deemed a “million-dollar project,” with most funding provided by the state ofNew Mexico, only a fraction found its way into Vigil’s pocket. He received about four hundred thousand dollars over nine years, and a fair portion was funneled into supplies, materials, and honoraria for his assistants. (And in March 2011, the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs would demand back nearly the same amount from the foundation that funded the fresco, claiming it had been spent on “impermissible” expenditures, such as administrative fees. Vigil’s share, however, would remain uncontested.)

In the past decade, Vigil has been levied by the IRS. He has hired lawyers. He has fired lawyers. Twice, he grabbed his brushes and threatened to quit.

Yet the wall kept luring him back.

Despite these trials, Vigil remains handsome and gallant, with slick brown hair, a Don Quixote goatee, a paint-splattered smock over jeans, and Fluchos sandals over socks. His hands resemble a carpenter’s, callused and capable. Friends call him Miguel Angel, the Michelangelo of New Mexico, and this is his Sistine Chapel: the interior of the forty-five-foot-high watchtower, or torreón, guarding the front gate of the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) in Albuquerque.

In May 2010, five months remained before his fresco’s grand opening, and entire stretches of wall bore either charcoal outlines or nothing at all. The notion of meeting his deadline seemed quixotic, at best. But the same could be said of the entire enterprise…..

Intrigued? Click here for the issue or, even better, visit the masterpiece yourself at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Que viva Frederico!

Tell us about your journey toward becoming a writer.

I grew up wanting to be both a scientist and a writer. When I was seventeen, the latter seemed like a pipe dream, and the former, a rational career choice. I wrote “biology” on the “intended major” line of my college application and never reconsidered that choice. I probably should have. At the end of every semester of my college career, I received a strong urging to reconsider – in the form of a grade report that highlighted my facility in the humanities and mediocrity in the sciences. After college, I worked for three months as a marine biology field assistant. I loved the work, but realized I had no talent as a scientist. I took a job as a grassroots organizer and followed that career path for a decade. Slowly, my interest in social change organizing led me back to my childhood desire to be a writer.

Yes, you have quite a history of working with social justice organizations. Tell us about that, as well as how it impacted your writing.

I was a staff organizer for the GE Boycott in the early 1990s. Then I worked for a Central America solidarity organization that campaigned against NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. After that, I was Communications Coordinator at Grassroots International for four years. My (very generous) boss at Grassroots International encouraged me to take workshops in creative writing and graphic design. My first writing workshop was led by Louise Dunlap, author of the excellent book Undoing the Silence: Tools for Social Change Writing. Louise introduced me to the practice of freewriting – if it weren’t for that practice, I never would have begun writing creatively.

My writing grew from my curiosity about the mechanisms of social change. I was trying to answer the question: What makes people set aside short-term, personal interests and work together for long-term, collective benefit? (I’m still trying to answer that question.) My first published pieces were about community organizing initiatives in Southern Mexico. I ended up writing a book on this subject: No Word For Welcome.

Which is the book you’re promoting now. Sounds like you have organized quite a tour for it: 40 events in all, and not just at traditional bookstores.

Yes. My event venues include a Oaxacan restaurant, a labor union building where I organized meetings fifteen years ago, the main library of the college I attended more than twenty years ago, the visitor center of the national park where I’m currently working as writer in residence, two universities that use my first book (Telling True Stories) as a course text, and my favorite bar in Seattle.

And then it’s back to the writing table, no? Tell us about your daily practice.

I write in the mornings. When I’m teaching, I try to schedule my classes in the afternoons and evenings so I can keep to that schedule. When I’m not teaching, I devote my afternoons to editing projects, administration, marketing, and research. I create a fairly elaborate work plan each month to keep track of all my deadlines and works-in-progress. I tend to work fifty to sixty hours per week, though I don’t have a particularly regular schedule. Because I’m a freelancer, at least one-fifth of my work hours are devoted to keeping myself employed and my writing projects funded. My daily writing time might be as little as 20 minutes or as much as four hours. I only write (and that includes revision) for eight hours in a day when I’m under extreme deadline pressure or at an extremely ideal writer’s colony.

At what point did Latin America become a muse?

I began learning Spanish while working as a grassroots organizer in Boston. I collaborated with local Spanish-speaking groups and with organizations in Mexico and Central America. Basic Spanish was an essential job skill, so I enrolled in evening classes. Starting in 1995, I devoted my annual vacation time to a two- or three-week visit to Latin America. In late 1999 I applied for and received a two-year grant from the Institute of Current World Affairs to live, work and write in Mexico. By the time I returned to the U.S. in 2002, I was able to work as an (unofficial) interpreter and translator and (thanks to editing help from Mexican friends) had published articles in Spanish.

Tell us about your work as a translator.

I am not a certified translator and my sole training was a fabulous two-week summer workshop that I took in 2005. Mundo a Mundo is offered by the Universities of Oregon and Querétaro every other summer – I highly recommend it! The  American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is also an excellent resource. I am rarely paid to translate; it’s more of an avocation for me. I practiced literary translation in collaboration with a friend of mine, Maria Victoria, who is perfectly bilingual (which I most certainly am not) and writes her fiction in Spanish. I translate her work into English and she translates mine into Spanish. We read one another’s translations and suggest improvements; it’s an ideal learning experience.

You’ve been published in scores of literary magazines. How did you break into that tough market?

I sent my first submissions to literary magazines while I was living and working in Mexico, more than a decade ago. Most lit mags didn’t have websites then, and I didn’t have any way to buy copies, so it was definitely not a well-researched plan. I didn’t land any publications from that first round of submissions (unsurprisingly), but I received some useful feedback. I’ve had the most success submitting to magazines where I have some sort of connection – no matter how tenuous. That said, the most important thing is to make peace with rejection.

Lately, you have also been working as a teacher. How did that come about, and how do you balance the demands of the classroom with your own work?

Though both of my parents were teachers, I never imagined that I would become one. I led several training programs in my years as a grassroots organizer, but I never thought of that as “teaching.” I was simply helping people discover what they already knew. I finally came to understand that’s what teaching is. I “taught” my first creative writing class in 2006; I’m surprised by how quickly it became my primary profession. I greatly enjoy teaching – so much so that I consciously limit how much I do it. When I teach fulltime, I become so absorbed in the work and experiences of my students that I tend to push my own writing projects to the side. But if I’m not writing, what business do I have teaching it?

Maya Roads documents your thirty-year experience — I was going to say love affair — with the Central American rainforest.  We’re talking jungle here, right? As in, eight-foot snakes?

We are talking jungle, its beauty, magic, and violence, too, but also unforgettable people, archaeological digs, ancient towns and the crown jewel of the region’s colonial cities, San Cristobal de las Casas. Classic Maya rainforest cities such as Palenque, Tikal in Guatemala and the city of paintings, Bonampak, are reached fairly easily these days by travelers, even though they are surrounded by jungle.  Oh, and yes, poisonous snakes appear in Maya Roads, too.

How did your obsession with the Maya rainforest begin?

As a Spanish student in Mexico City, I saw a museum exhibit about the Lacandon Maya Indians, showing that they still hunted with bows and arrows, wore togas and wore their hair down to their shoulders, and lived much as their ancestors did more than a thousand years ago.  Being very young then I said to myself blithely, “I must go there,” and while it was not quite that simple, I did make my way to Lacandon villages and never forgot the adventure.  After becoming a journalist, covering the Middle East and the civil wars in Central America, I returned to the rainforest, with different eyes and experience.

Tell us about the people you met.

What’s exciting about traveling through Maya lands is not just its natural beauty, but that people you meet practice customs and habits that go back more than a couple of millenia, and you can recognize them once you know what they are. It’s like being in the present and the past at the same time. I call Maya Roads “deep travel,” the kind of book you read when you want to know more about where you’ve been or prepare yourself well for where you’re going.  I’m hoping travelers interested in the 2012 phenomenon will get a lot out of it, too.

Any advice for readers who dream of launching their own adventures and becoming a travel writer?

Let’s assume you already write well, know how a story arcs and rewards and can take good pictures — editors expect all these. Choose places in which you already have deep interest, places you read about for pleasure, whose art or food or history intrigues you. And know some of the language, where a lot of understanding is embedded. (Maya speak 29 different languages, but you can travel happily among them with a little Spanish.) And good luck!

Where can we catch you?

I’m really enjoying this tour of readings and discussions at bookstores, campuses and other venues.  They’re listed here.

* Travelers’ Tales just sent me a box full of the latest translation of 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, from Korea. I can’t believe how thick it is–nearly double the heft of the original. Too bad I can’t read a word… though the layout/design/photography is terrific. Here’s the cover:

Que fun, no?

* The Believer has bought my profile of master frescoist Frederico Vigil! I met this extraordinary artist last May, when I was teaching at the National Latino Writers Conference at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, and was so blown away by his latest work–a 4,000 square foot fresco detailing 3,000 years of Latino history–I interviewed him on the spot. I returned to Albuquerque last October for the grand opening of the fresco, and have been in contact with him ever since. He is truly a magical man, and the Believer will be running my 4,000-word profile in their annual arts issue in November.

* The Florida Review has asked to publish the first chapter of my thesis/next book, currently titled Corpitos: Mystics and Mayhem in South Texas. The essay is called “A Sort of Homecoming,” and details my experiences at a silent retreat in Sarita, Texas, where I decided that, rather than run around the world again for my next book, I should take time to deeper explore my hometown and surrounding area. This essay will be featured in their Winter 2011 volume.

* The beautiful and talented Adriana V. Lopez has asked me to submit an essay for her forthcoming anthology Las Comadres: Latina Authors Reflect on Friendships, due out next spring with Simon & Schuster. I had a blast writing a ditty called “Road Sisters,” about my decade-long friendship with Brazilian international aide rockstar Daphne Sorensen, one of my U.S. Trekker teammates. Seriously: if any of you writers out there are in need of a pick-me-up, write an ode to your most beloved friend. It will make you laugh and cry, at the same time.

Bueno, here’s wishing you all a happy long weekend. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Travel the world and get paid for it? Yes, it’s true! Whether a long weekend in Mendocino or a long walk across Nepal, there’s a market out there for your stories, and a proven path that successful travel writers follow. In this course, you’ll learn how to grow your freelance writing career by mastering one of its most adaptable, engaging genres: travel.

Travel writing is a conduit to many parallel genres, from food to art, politics to technology, and the skills and experience you’ll gain covering travel can be applied to all your writings. In week one, we’ll fully assess the travel writing market (magazines, newspapers, guidebooks, websites, blogs, and more) and set individual writing agendas for the duration of class. In following weeks we’ll reveal the inner workings of the field, showing how travel editors think and what they want from their writers. We’ll diagram the many different styles of travel writing, study the critical role of pitch letters, analyze key components to strong travel writing, and show how and why you can use travel writing as a springboard to other genres.

Throughout class we’ll extensively workshop your pitches and articles, and you’ll graduate with a series of solid pieces ready for you to sell. You’ll also create your own blog, develop a mission for it, and learn the opportunities that exist for publishing online.

In this class, you will learn:

• How to break into travel writing
• The rules of reporting, interviewing, finding sources, and local color
• What kinds of stories make good journalism
• What travel editors look for, and how to get them to notice you
• Where to find story ideas in any place, and how to pitch them successfully
• What to do when you get to your destination
• How to turn one trip into dozens of sellable story ideas
• Where to pitch travel articles besides travel publications

By the end of class, you will have:
Two salable pieces and pitch letters to match (and the know-how to send them out!)

Students who have taken this class have been published in:
National Geographic Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Outside, Sunset, Bon Appetit, Entrepreneur, San Francisco, Time Out New York, andBudget Travel

The online classroom has several interactive components:

• Instructors post lectures once a week. You can read them online, print them, or download them at your convenience.
• Students post completed assignments for feedback and discussion by the instructor and class.
• Weekly chats allow your class to get together via instant message. Transcripts are available for review if you can’t attend.
• Technical support is available from Mediabistro staff.

Cost of the class is $499. The weekly chats will be held every Thursday from 10 – 11 p.m. EST.

Want to take the plunge? You can register for it here.

Gracias!

* hiking through Tennessee Valley and then downing a bottle of wine, a bag of cherries, and a block of lavender goat cheese on Paradise Beach with Marcy Gordon

* bonding with Lavinia Spalding, editor of Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011, over dim-sum at Yank Sing (which serves the yummiest jiaozi this side of the Pacific)

* wandering the winding streets of San Francisco, chai-and-chocolate-milk in hand, with Lea Aschkensas

* biking across Elk Refuge and beholding the Grand Teton

* meeting one of my literary heroes, Cristina Garcia, at the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference and then devouring her latest novel, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, in a day-long gulp

* meeting another literary hero, Ben Fountain, at a barbecue in Dallas and then re-reading and re-falling for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara 

* road-tripping South Texas in search of good stories with my co-pilot, Greg

Next stop is San Antonio, where I’ll be teaching a day-long travel writing class at one of my fave literary centers in the nation: Gemini Ink. Then I’m jetting back to the West Coast to teach a three-day memoir writing workshop at the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference in Northern California. I’ll also be jumping up and down with some of my most beloved people on the planet: Marisa Handler (BWTW 2010 contributor and singer/writer/activist extraordinaire) and my Trekker family. Happiness!

Here’s hoping your summer is equally blessed. Thanks for stopping by y saludos.

Jeepneys for Jesus: welcome to Asia's most Catholic country

The inspiration behind the journey was the 50th anniversary of the National Writers Workshop at Silliman University in Dumaguete, aka the oldest creative writing program in Asia. Founded by two graduates of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (the venerable Edith and Edilberto Tiempo), the NWW gathers more than a dozen Filipino essayists, novelists, poets, and playwrights around a table for an Iowa-style workshop for three weeks each year. We — the thirty members of Iowa’s Overseas Writing Workshop — arrived just in time to help them celebrate at a gala complete with singing, dancing, “magisterial photos,” and a blow-out feast of lechon (a young roasted pig that is crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside, and delicious through and through).

My friend Nel meets the Bolo-Bolo

From there, we spent about 20 days island-hopping around the country. Highlights included hiking through the jungle surrounding Lake Balinsasayao in a rainstorm; watching an 86-year-old bolo-bolo (or shaman) blow out whatever ailed my colleagues into a glass of water via a reed straw; snorkeling and kayaking off the coast of Siquijor; $6, hour-long massages; spotting a tarsier in a tree; beholding the Chocolate Hills of Bohol; being moved to tears in the martyred poet Jose Rizal’s museum in Manila; singing karaoke in Cebu City; and reading in the bombed-out remains of a cinema on the war-torn island of Corregidor.

the Chocolate Hills

What will bring me back: the mangoes; the flores de luna (deeply perfumed “moon flowers”); the crazy colorful jeepneys; the Filipino tendency to double their words (e.g. “balik-balik” for “come again”); the tradition of greeting guests with leis made of seashells; the fabulous nicknames (e.g. “Bing-Bing,” “Buzz,” and “Peachy”); the coconut shakes; the green mango shakes; the strangler fig trees; the calamansi juice (from the sweetest, tangiest, tiniest limes ever); the pet-sized geckos scrambling across the ceilings; the mango birds (which literally look like mangoes with wings); the jubilant names of things (e.g. the fast food restaurant Jollibee’s “Chicken Joy”); and above all — the warmth and beauty of the people. I’m so grateful to have returned again to Asia, a place I called home more than a decade ago. I need to figure out how to make it part of my life again….

Anyway! I hope y’all enjoy the photos. Salamat….