Austin Straus is a poet and visual artist. He was host and producer of The Poetry Connexion on Pacifica Radio (1981-1996). He has worked for human rights with Amnesty International and other groups. He has taught English, art, and philosophy, and has conducted poetry workshops.
The author also creates paintings, collages and prints, but his specialty is unique artists’ books (in public and private collections including Mills College and the Athenaeum). His poetry books from Red Hen Press include Drunk with Light (2002) and Intensifications (2010). Strauss has been married to poet and writer Wanda Coleman for 30 years
Texas native Bill Caballero has been playing trumpet since sixth grade -- when his father refused to give him permission to play trombone and insisted he play trumpet as his grandfather had.
Caballero joined an R&B band when he was in eighth grade and played in it through the 10th grade, when “it was kind of cool playing in nightclubs at the age of 14.” After high school, he auditioned for and was accepted by the Army-Navy-Marine School of Music in Norfolk Va. Caballero then attended the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, where he fell in love with jazz.
He formed a couple of bands in Texas, but in 1989, because Latin jazz was “pretty foreign” there, he headed for San Francisco. He stopped in San Diego on the way, but an earthquake shook the Bay Area, so he stayed here.
Since then, Caballero has taught in the local school system as brass coach, assistant band director, and band director. He has performed in musicals, including “Songs of Singapore,” “Five Guys Named Moe,” “A Tribute to Harry Warren,” “Dream Girls,” and “A Chorus Line.”
The trumpet player, who has recorded three cd’s, has played with various local bands and started his Mambo Orchestra, The Caballero-Verde Quintet, and most recently, the Quinteto Caballero.
Orquesta Bi-Nacional de Mambo is an 18-piece band dedicated to performing and promoting Latin big band music from the 1950's to the present. The band's dazzling performances celebrate a wide range of musical styles including mambo, bolero, cha cha cha, salsa, and other forms of Latin Jazz. Led by versatile trumpeter Bill Caballero, this group features some of the best cross-cultural musicians from the San Diego-Tijuana border region. The band's sizzling live shows have gained them a devoted following and reputation for passion and authenticity. Since its inception in 2000, the band has performed for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the San Diego Latino Film Festival, the San Diego Museum of Art, the California Center for the Performing Arts in Escondido, the Adams Avenue Street Fair, the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Tijuana's Casa de la Cultura, Dizzy's, and the KSDS Jazz Live radio program.
Christopher Buckley’s 17th book of poetry, Rolling the Bones, won the 2009 Tampa Review Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Tampa Press in April 2010. Other recent books are Modern History: Prose Poems1987-2007, published by Tupelo Press; Flying Backbone: The Georgia O’Keeffe Poems, 2008, Blue Light Press; And The Sea, (2006), The Sheep Meadow Press.
Buckley was a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry for 2007-2008 and was awarded the James Dickey Prize for 2008 from Five Points Magazine. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Award in Creative Writing to the former Yugoslavia; four Pushcart Prizes; two awards from the Poetry Society of America; and NEA grants in poetry for 2001 and 1984. Other awards include the City Works National Writers Award for 2006 from San Diego City College and the Kenneth O. Hansen and Vi Gale poetry awards from HUBBUB magazine.
His first book of creative nonfiction, Cruising State: Growing up in Southern California was published in 1994. A second collection, Sleep Walk, was published by Eastern Washington University Press, 2006. In 2001, he published Appreciations: Selected Reviews, Views, & Interviews—1975-2000, Mille Grazie Press.
With Gary Young, Buckley is the editor of and The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry ofPlace (Hey Day Books 1999). With David Oliveira and M.L. Williams, he is editor of How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (The Round House Press, 2001). For the University of Michigan Press’ Under Discussion series, he edited The Poetry of Philip Levine: Stranger to Nothing, 1991.
Recently he edited the poetry anthologies, Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems & Poetics from California (with Gary Young) Alcatraz Editions, 2008; Homage to Vallejo, Greenhouse Review Press, 2006; and, with Alexander Long, he edited A Condition Of The Spirit: The Life And Work Of Larry Levis, Eastern Washington University Press, 2004. Due in January 2011 is Aspects of Robinson: Homage to Weldon Kees, edited with Christopher Howell from The Backwaters Press.
Over the last 30 years his poetry has appeared in such literary journals as APR, Poetry, Field, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Hudson Review, The Gettysburg Review, Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Five Points, & New Letters among others. His creative nonfiction has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Santa Monica Review, River City, Crazyhorse, The Florida Review, The Cimarron Review, and Denver Quarterly.
Jill Holslin is a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State University where she has taught courses on the politics of street art & popular culture, Islam and modernity, and the U.S.-Mexico border wall. A photographer and blogger, Holslin has spent the past three years documenting the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in San Diego County, and has used her work to lobby political leaders both in San Diego and in Washington D.C. with the coalition No Border Wall.
Holslin publishes articles about culture in the San Diego-Tijuana region regularly on her blog, http://www.attheedges.com/
Lê thi diem thúy was born in Phan Thiet, Southern Vietnam. She and her father left Vietnam by boat in 1978, eventually settling in Southern California. The writer was born in 1972, a year that is remembered in its totality as “the red fiery summer,” a time of fierce attacks from the north that resulted in fires that scorched the countryside. Her novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, captures the family’s experience; first appeared in the Massachusetts Review ; and was reprinted in Harper’s. It was included in Best American Essays `97, (as well the edition of Best American Essays that contains a selection of the “best of the best” from the past 12 volumes).
Thúy is also a solo performance artist whose works, “Red Fiery Summer” (Mua He Do Lua), and “the bodies between us”have been presented at, among other venues, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the International Women Playwright’s Festival in Galway, Ireland, and the Vineyard Theater in New York City.
The author has been awarded residencies from The Headlands Center For The Arts, Hedgebrook and The Lannan Foundation and a New Works For A New World grant from the New World Theater at UMASS-Amherst and the New England Foundation for the Arts. She was a Radcliffe Fellow in 2003, a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow in 2008. She lives in Massachusetts.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego; immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her fourth book, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse, was published in January by NYU Press.
Cohn’s other books include Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent;Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law; Cameras in the Courtroom: Television in the Pursuit of Justice.
In 2008, Professor Cohn testified about Bush administration torture policy before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She is the 2008 recipient of the Peace Scholar of the Year Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association. Her numerous articles can be read at www.marjoriecohn.com.
Known for her take-no-prisoners readings, Wanda Coleman is a recent contributor to HARRIET (poetryfoundation.org) and drgodine.blogspot. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, Obsidian and Best American Poetry. She has been featured in Writing Los Angeles (Library of America), Poet’s Market (2003), Quercus Review VI, The Los Angeles Review, the Burnside Review and online at MS.
A seminal figure of L.A.’s poetry underground, she has shared the stage with such cultural icons as Timothy Leary, Alice Coltrane, Allen Ginsberg, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos and Richard (Louie Louie) Barry. Coleman has been an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and columnist for Los Angeles Times magazine; a nominee for poet laureate of California, and for the USA artists fellowship. She has published 18 books of poetry and fiction which include Bathwater Wine, winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize—the first African-American woman to receive the award -- and Mercurochrome (poems), bronze-medal finalist, National Book Awards 2001. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. Her most recent books include Ostinato Vamps (Pitt Poetry Series), The Riot Inside Me: Trials & Tremors (nonfiction, Godine/Black Sparrow), WANDA COLEMAN: Poems Seismic in Scene (de la chienne) - Mise en page et calligraphies/layout and illumination by Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, and Jazz & Twelve O’clock Tales—new stories. The World Falls Away, new poems, will appear in fall 2011 (Pitt Poetry Series).
Zohreh Ghahremani (Zoe) is an Iranian-American whose book, Sky of Red Poppies, was released October 2010. It focuses on an unusual friendship between two young women coming of age in a politically divided 1960's Iran under rule of the Shah. Her first book, The Commiserator, was published in 2000 in her native language, Persian. Over two hundred of her essays and vignettes – both in English and Persian - have appeared in several magazines and bloggers. Gharemani has written three novels, including The Moon Daughter, which is a finalist in San Diego Book Awards.
A charter member of San Diego Writers’ Ink, Zoe is also on its board and has organized the Great Book Exchange. She is a member of IAWA, and has previously served on the board of the San Diego Book Awards. The author has made the U.S. her permanent home over the past four decades. Following twenty-five years of teaching at Northwestern University, as well as running her dental practice in the Chicago area, she retired in pursuit of her lifelong passion and became a writer. She lives in San Diego with her husband and close to their three children. When not writing, she enjoys painting and gardening. More info: http://www.zoeghahremani.com/blog1/?tag=zohreh-ghahremani
“Our village was attacked by our government when I was seven years old. We fled a thousand miles across Sudan to Ethiopia on foot. The traveling was always by night and I hated this very much because we were not allowed to sleep and when I stepped on unidentified things in the dark like thorns, twigs and sharp stones, my feet were sore all the time. But I was not the only one, about twenty-five boys my age shared the same hardships. This stopped me from any complaints or crying. I was not wearing any shirt or jacket, just only my underwear all the way to Ethiopia.”
Benson Athiin Deng began to learn English by writing the alphabet with a stick in the sand in Ethiopia. When he was driven from there, he and his brother, Alepho, were captured and put into a camp called Natinga. Alepho fell seriously ill and there were no medicines, clinics or anyone to care for him. Their lives were in danger and Benson’s friends wanted him to escape with them. Risking his own life, Benson stayed behind for his brother and nursed him until a few months later. Near death, Alepho was finally transported to a refugee camp for treatment. Benson later escaped and made a treacherous desert crossing that not everyone survived. When Benson reached safety in Kenya, he began his education again. Upon his arrival in America, Benson, with his brother, Alephonsian Deng, and cousin, Benjamin Ajak, wrote a book about their life in Africa called They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys From Sudan, which is edited by Judy Bernstein.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her themes include women, immigration, the South Asian experience, history, myth, magic, and celebrating diversity. She writes both for adults and children. Her latest work, One Amazing Thing, was published in 2010.
Divakaruni is also the author of Arranged Marriage, which won an American Book Award. Her other works, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into films. In addition, Divakaruni is an acclaimed poet whose collection, Leaving Yuba City, won a Pushcart Prize, an Allen Ginsberg Prize and a Gerbode Foundation award. Her writing has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and been included in over 50 anthologies. Her works have been translated into 20 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Russian, and Japanese.
The author was born in India and lived there until 1976, when she left Calcutta and came to the United States. She earned a master’s degree in English from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Cris Mazza is the author of 14 books, including novels, short fiction and a memoir. Her works include the critically notable Is It Sexual Harassment Yet? and psychological novels of place, Girl Beside Him and Waterbaby. Many of Mazza's books take place in San Diego and the surrounding county, including Homeland, Trickle-Down Timeline, Indigenous: Growing up Californian, and her new novel Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls, which looks at prostitute-slave trafficking in Southern California.
Mazza's first novel, How to Leave a Country,won the PEN / Nelson Algren Award for book-length fiction. Some of her other titles include Your Name Here: ___; Dog People; and Indigenous / Growing Up Californian. A native of Southern California, Cris Mazza grew up in San Diego County. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Diego State University and an MFA in writing from Brooklyn College. She has taught at Mesa College, Miramar College, and UC San Diego and is now a professor in and director of the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Judy Patacsil, co-author of Filipinos in San Diego, is a counselor at Miramar College, where she chairs the Miramar College Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and where she founded the Filipino American Student Association. Patacsil co-wrote the companion guide for Silent Sacrifices, a documentary which addresses the struggles of immigrant Filipinos and their American-raised children, and provides a forum for open dialogue to find solutions. Other co-authors for Images of America: Filipinos in San Diego include Rudy Guevarra Jr. and Felix Tuyay.
As a founding member, she is actively involved in the San Diego chapter of the Filipino-American National Historical Society, whose mission is to research, disseminate and celebrate Filipino-American history. Patacsil completed her master’s degree in counseling with an emphasis in multicultural competency from San Diego State. A licensed psychotherapist, she worked in mental health care and SDSU Psychological Services before joining Miramar College in 1992.
A new memoir byLuis Rodríguez, It Calls You Back: A Writer's Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing, is due out in October, 2011.
Achieving success as an award-winning Chicano poet who escaped poverty, Rodríguez was sure the streets would haunt him no more — until his young son joined a gang himself. Rodríguez fought for his child by telling his own story in the bestseller Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., avivid memoir that explores the motivation of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants.Always Running earned a Carl Sandburg Literary Award and was designated a New York Times Notable Book; it has also been named by the American Library Association as one of the nation’s 100 most censored books.
An accomplished poet, Rodríguez is the author of several collections of poetry, including My Nature is Hunger: New and Selected Poems 1989-2004 (Curbstone Press). His poetry has won a Poetry Center Book Award and a PEN/Josephine Miles Literary Award among others. His books for children, America Is Her Name and It Doesn't Have To Be This Way: A Barrio Story, published in English and Spanish, have also won several awards including a Patterson Young Adult Book Award and a Parent’s Choice Book Award. Rodríguez is also the author of Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times and a novel, Music of the Mill.
Other honors include a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Lannan Fellowship for Poetry, a Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature, a California Arts Council fellowship and several Illinois Arts Council fellowships. Rodríguez was also one of 50 leaders worldwide selected as “Unsung Heroes of Compassion,” presented by the Dalai Lama. He is one of the founders of the small poetry publishing house Tia Chucha Press, as well as Tia Chucha's Café & Centro Cultural—a bookstore, coffee shop, art gallery, performance space, and workshop center in Los Angeles.
Tijuana native Víctor Clark Alfaro studied social anthropology at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and conducted doctoral studies in sociology from the University of California San Diego. He was a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) from 1981-1983 and has been a lecturer at San Diego State University since 1999. Clark is the founder and director of the Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos (Binational Center for Human Rights) in Tijuana. In addition, he has served as a counselor for the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (Commission for the National Development of Indigenous Peoples). A former writer for the Pacific News Service and a columnist for La Opinión in Los Angeles, he is the author of Mixtecos en Frontera (Mixtecos on the Border) and Los Mixtecos, sus mujeres y el turismo (The Mixtecs: Their Women and Tourism), which was published by and received an award from the UABC.
Astute scholars from California examine the geopolitical dynamics of the U.S.-Mexican border in this eye-opening anthology. They have not only studied, but given voice to those subjected to the inhumane conditions created by a geographical boundary and its attendant globalization policies. Each contributor combines historical context and analysis with fascinating narratives that deepen our understanding of topics such as the criminalization and trauma suffered by deportees; the horrors of daily living in Juarez; NAFTA’s environmental destruction; and the role of Mexican workers and immigrants in labor struggles in Mexico and the U.S. Contributors include David Bacon; Victor Clark-Alfaro; Belinda C. Lum and Thomas E. Reifer; Maura I. Toro-Morn and Nilda Flores-Gonzalez; Martha Escobar; Sharon Allen; Justin Akers Chacón ; Jill Holsin; Pedro F. Quijada ; and David Shmidt . The anthology is published by City Works Press and is edited by Justin Akers Chacón and Enríque Dávalos..
Featuring:
Bill Caballero
Texas native Bill Caballero has been playing trumpet since sixth grade -- when his father refused to give him permission to play trombone and insisted he play trumpet as his grandfather had.
Caballero joined an R&B band when he was in eighth grade and played in it through the 10th grade, when “it was kind of cool playing in nightclubs at the age of 14.” After high school, he auditioned for and was accepted by the Army-Navy-Marine School of Music in Norfolk Va. Caballero then attended the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, where he fell in love with jazz.
He formed a couple of bands in Texas, but in 1989, because Latin jazz was “pretty foreign” there, he headed for San Francisco. He stopped in San Diego on the way, but an earthquake shook the Bay Area, so he stayed here.
Since then, Caballero has taught in the local school system as brass coach, assistant band director, and band director. He has performed in musicals, including “Songs of Singapore,” “Five Guys Named Moe,” “A Tribute to Harry Warren,” “Dream Girls,” and “A Chorus Line.”
The trumpet player, who has recorded three cd’s, has played with various local bands and started his Mambo Orchestra, The Caballero-Verde Quintet, and most recently, the Quinteto Caballero.
Orquesta Bi-Nacional de Mambo is an 18-piece band dedicated to performing and promoting Latin big band music from the 1950's to the present. The band's dazzling performances celebrate a wide range of musical styles including mambo, bolero, cha cha cha, salsa, and other forms of Latin Jazz. Led by versatile trumpeter Bill Caballero, this group features some of the best cross-cultural musicians from the San Diego-Tijuana border region. The band's sizzling live shows have gained them a devoted following and reputation for passion and authenticity. Since its inception in 2000, the band has performed for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the San Diego Latino Film Festival, the San Diego Museum of Art, the California Center for the Performing Arts in Escondido, the Adams Avenue Street Fair, the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Tijuana's Casa de la Cultura, Dizzy's, and the KSDS Jazz Live radio program.
