Thursday, April 13
Afro-Latinx Poetry
Shirley Campbell Barr es costarricense. Antropóloga especializada en Feminismo Africano y Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo. Es docente que imparte cursos, conferencias y talleres a nivel de educación media y universitaria en diferentes países de América Latina, además de ofrecer con cierta regularidad talleres de escritura creativa a mujeres y a nivel comunitario. Es activista del movimiento afrodescendiente en América Latina en donde participa periódicamente, difundiendo su trabajo y contribuyendo en los procesos de movilización y concientización de las comunidades afrodescendientes. Su trabajo ha sido difundido y reconocido a través de las organizaciones afrodescendientes, de mujeres negras y organizaciones de mujeres en América Latina y El Caribe. Cuenta con cinco colecciones de poesía y decenas de poemas, entrevistas y artículos publicados en revistas, antologías y periódicos en diversos países. Algunos de sus trabajos han sido traducidos al inglés, francés portugués y alemán.
Roberto Carlos García writes about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-Diasporic experience. His work has been published widely in places like Poetry, the Root, the BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3 and others. He is the author of five books, including four poetry collections—Melancolía (Cervena Barva Press, 2016); black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018); [Elegies] (FlowerSong Press, 2020); and the recently published What Can I Tell You: The Selected Poems of Roberto Carlos García (Flowersong Press, 2022)—and one essay collection, Traveling Freely, forthcoming in 2024 from Northwestern University Press. Roberto is the founder of Get Fresh Books Publishing, a literary nonprofit.
Osiris Mosquea. República Dominicana. Narradora y poeta. En el género de cuento ha publicado Despiadadamente solos y De segunda mano; y, en poesía: Desde la soledad de los puertos; Una mujer: todas las mujeres; Viandante en Nueva York; & Raga del Tiempo.
Tuesday, April 18
Poetry and Performance
Yaissa Jiménez, DR, 1986. Writer, poet, performer and scriptwriter addicted to observation. Author of “Papaya Ritual”. MFA at New York University NYU Creative Writing Program in Spanish. Winner of Abya Yala Poetry Slam 2022.
Robe L. Ninho. Rapero, productor, compositor, cosmetólogo, estilista, especialista en cabello afro, director de barbers streets cuban hip hop C4 y @africabellos
Edna Liliana Valencia Murillo es una periodista orgullosamente afrocolombiana con más de 15 años de experiencia en medios de comunicación nacionales e internacionales. Activista por los derechos de la población afro, poeta y escritora; autora del libro El Racismo y yo, publicado en mayo de 2022 en la Feria internacional al del libro de Bogotá. Actual jefe de prensa de la vicepresidenta de Colombia, Francia Márquez.
Comunicadora social con énfasis en periodismo internacional y comunicación para el desarrollo. Presentadora de noticias y reportera con cubrimientos internacionales con experiencia en alrededor de 20 países del mundo. Experta en estudios afrolatinoamericanos certificada por la universidad de Harvard.
Helen Ceballos. Self-taught cross-border performance artist, photographer and video artist. In addition, she is a producer and cultural manager. He was born in the Caribbean in the 1980s. He completed graduate studies at the National University of Art in Argentina with a specialization in Performance, production and new media (2015). His performative work has toured theaters, galleries, universities, communities, and festivals in the Caribbean, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Her research work has been published in magazines and anthologies in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the United States. As part of her work as a cultural manager and artivist, she creates projects aimed at community social management and artistic training. . She thinks about her job as a producer and manager, from a horizontal perspective. She recently directed and curated, together with Marina Barsy and Isil Sol Vil, MAR DE ISLAS Caribbean performance meeting and directs the Eje Platform project that serves as an umbrella to support and create socio-cultural programs, community-based organizations and art projects aimed at defend our island autonomies, starting from a feminist, anti-racist, decentralized, decolonial and itinerant perspective. Her artistic practice aims to strengthen ties and continue developing networks and initiatives in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.
Wednesday, April 19
Media and Visual Arts
Christian Roldán Aponte is an artist/muralist based in Chicago with extensive experience creating community-based murals that represent the local community values. He has worked with multiple art organizations for the advancement of the arts in the Puerto Rican diaspora. He graduated with a master's degree from the School of the Arts Institute and is part of Chicago Public Artists Group artist, the Arts and Culture Committee of the Puerto Rican Agenda and the founder of Diaspora Designs. He has been the co-founder of the Rican Renaissance relief fundraiser for the victims of Hurricane María and founded the Barrio Arts and Culture Youth program under PRCC. Recently he is developing his career as a freelance artist with his studio located in Humboldt Park.
Eduardo Arocho (Chicago) is a poet, curator and professional tour guide. He is the author of six poetry chapbooks and his poems appear in: Dialogo Journal, DePaul University, (2023); Another Chicago Magazine (2022); Wherever I’m At, An Anthology of Chicago Poetry by The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, After Hours Press & Third World Press (2022); We Are by The Chicago Community Trust (2016); Cantalogia I: El Amor (Palabra Pura Poets) by Pandora Lobo Estepario Press, Chicago (2013); El Movimiento De Los Reyes Hacia La Estrella Sola by Ramón López (2008); Diálogo Journal, DePaul University Chicago, Vol. 8 Num. 1 Article 20 (2004); CENTRO JOURNAL, Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, New York, NY (2001); Power Lines: Anthology by Tia Chucha Press, (2000); and Open Fist: Anthology of Young Illinois Poets by Tia Chucha Press, (1993). He is currently completing work on his forthcoming poetry manuscript, Nació Maestro.
Ingrid Brioso Rieumont is a scholar of modern and contemporary Latin America with a particular focus on the history of slavery and the literature, aesthetics, and philosophy of the Hispanophone Caribbean and Brazil. Her research interests include Afro-Latin American writers in the nineteenth century, the history of political thought in the Caribbean, the relation between slavery and literary form, and critical theory and aesthetics of both Spanish America and Brazil. She is also interested in the relation between exile and correspondence, and architectural form and politics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Cuba. She is the Spanish translator and editor of Paletó e eu. Memórias de meu pai indígena, by Aparecida Vilaça, winner of the 2020 Casa de las Américas Literary Prize.
Keynote Address
Mayra Santos-Febres: (Puerto Rico, 1966) Narradora, ensayista, poeta y gestora cultural. Estudió Literatura en la Universidad de Puerto Rico y ha sido invitada como profesora, escritora y editora residente por múltiples universidades prestigiosas de Estados Unidos, Latinoamérica y Europa. Ha obtenido varios premios internacionales, entre los que destacan el Letras de Oro en 1994 y el Juan Rulfo en 1996, ambos en el género de cuento. Muchas de sus obras han sido traducidas al francés, inglés, alemán e italiano. Entre sus publicaciones en poesía cabe mencionar Anamú y manigua (1991), El orden escapado (1991), Mal (h)ablar: Antología de nueva literatura puertorriqueña (1997) y Tercer Mundo (1999). Ha publicado los libros de cuentos Pez de vidrio (1995), Pez de vidrio y otros cuentos (1996) y El cuerpo correcto (1997), entre otros; y las novelas Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000) y Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (2003), Nuestra señora de la noche (2008), La amante de Gardel (2015), Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (2016), Fe en disfraz (2017); y Antes que llegue la luz (2021).
The Politics of Race in the Academy
Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez is an Afro-Puerto Rican writer, teacher, and scholar from Hoboken, NJ. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and her B.A. in English, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University and the author of Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature (Northwestern, 2020) and the forthcoming The Survival of a People (Duke University Press). Her published work can be found in Hypatia, Decolonization, CENTRO, Small Axe, Frontiers, Hispanofilia, Contemporânea, Post 45 Contemporaries, SX Salon, and other scholarly journals and public forums. She is a founder of the MSU Womxn of Color Initiative, #ProyectoPalabrasPR, the Mentoring Underrepresented Students in English recruitment program (MUSE), and the DH project Electric Marronage. Dr. Figueroa is a 2015-2017 Duke University SITPA Fellow, a 2017-2018 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, a 2021-2022 Cornell University Society for the Humanities Fellow, and is the PI of the Mellon Diaspora Solidarities Lab (www.dslprojects.org).
Mauricio Acuña is a scholar of Afro-Latin American Studies, specializing in contemporary literatures and cultures of African Diaspora in the Americas, with a special focus in Brazil. His research interests include the poetics, performances, and aesthetics of Afro-diasporic artists and intellectuals, race relations, capoeira, and digital humanities. He is currently working on the book project Poetics and Performances of Afro-Atlantic Imaginations: The First World Festival of Negro Arts, which explores how previously understudied Afro-Latin American artists and writers shaped the aesthetic creations, anti-racist politics, and the rise of a Black Internationalism in the South Atlantic between 1950-1970. Mauricio's first book, A ginga da nação: intelectuais na capoeira e capoeiristas intelectuais, investigates the multiple creative ways which previously marginalized capoeira practitioners generated to legitimize and promote their art, sport practice and knowledge. He also co-edited the book Marcadores sociais da diferença: fluxos, trânsitos e intersecções, collaborated on the new critical edition of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's Raízes do Brasil (Companhia das Letras, 2016) and published articles on literature, popular culture and cinema.
Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés is the Associate Provost for Community Engagement at The City College of New York, and as such, she engages with community leaders on issues and programs of mutual interest and benefit to the College, and provides vision, direction, coordination and leadership for campus-community partnerships and programs that originate from or are administered by the Provost’s Office. She is the former interim dean of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY (2021-2022) and the former director of the Black Studies Program (2019-2021). A graduate of Yale and Vanderbilt Universities, and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, her research interests focus on the cultural production of Black peoples throughout the Americas: the United States and Latin America, including Brazil, and the Caribbean. She is the editor of The Future Is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies (2012) and Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora (2012). She is the author of Oshun's Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas (2014) and Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (2017). Her latest book, Racialized Visions: Haiti and the Hispanic Caribbean (2020) is an edited collection that re-centers Haiti in the disciplines of Caribbean, and more broadly, Latin American Studies. She is the series editor for the Afro-Latinx Futures series at SUNY Press.la población afro, poeta y escritora; utora del libro El Racismo y yo, publicado en mayo de 2022 en la Feria internacional al del libro de Bogotá. Actual jefe de prensa de la vicepresidenta de Colombia, Francia Márquez.
Comunicadora social con énfasis en periodismo internacional y comunicación para el desarrollo. Presentadora de noticias y reportera con cubrimientos internacionales con experiencia en alrededor de 20 países del mundo. Experta en estudios afrolatinoamericanos certificada por la universidad de Harvard.
Brujajá: A Filmed Theatrical Experience
Melissa DuPrey is an actor, comic, producer, musician, and playwright with roots from Humboldt Park, Chicago. She is a critically-acclaimed solo artist whose work spans over a decade with 5 full-length solo plays (SEXomedy, SUSHI-frito, Good Grief, SEXomedy 2.0, RISE OF THUNDERDOME) highlighting the intersections of diasporic Blackness, queerness, healing, liberation, and sexuality. DuPrey is also a community organizer and spiritualist who launched The Good Grief Project in 2020- an extension of the social justice component from her solo play GOOD GRIEF where communities of color are connected to local, accessible and multidisciplinary mental and spiritual wellness practitioners of color. DuPrey’s full-length play BRUJAJA, directed by Miranda Gonzalez, was digitized as a theatrical film by UrbanTheater Company in 2021 for its world premier. She has performed stand-up comedy in Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. She was most recently seen as “Dr. Sara Ortiz” on Greys Anatomy (Season 17 and 18). She's also been seen on Empire (FOX), The Resident (FOX), Chicago PD (NBC), and The Chi (Showtime). Her theater credits include works at Teatro Vista, Court Theater, The Goodman Theater, Steppenwolf, Free Street Theater, UrbantTheater Company, Victory Gardens, The Greenhouse Theater, Oracle Theater, and Teatro Luna. She is currently an Ensemble Member at UrbanTheater Company and Africaribe.
Miranda Gonzalez, born and raised in Chicago, is currently a Producing Artistic Director at UrbanTheater Company (UTC) in Humboldt Park and a founding ensemble member of Chicago’s All Latina Theater company Teatro Luna, is a facilitator, organizational strategist, and has created content addressing anti-blackness in the Latine community. Her niche of developing anti-oppressive praxis granted her an invitation to film a TedxTalk on decolonizing theater.
As an organizational strategist, She currently collaborates with BLVE Consults and Culture Change Lab supporting arts organizations and funders in reimagining strategic planning, operational assessments, communication strategies, and collective structures. She has devised and developed plays since 2000, is a 3Arts Awardee, and recipient of the International Centre for Women Playwrights 50/50 Award.
As a theater maker, her play Back In The Day: an 80’s House Music Dancesical, World Premiered as a part of Chicago Latino Theater Festival Destinos Festival at UTC in the fall of 2019. She is currently developing a play that discusses the history of the underground railroad to Mexico as a part of Latino Theater Company’s Imaginistas cohort in Los Angeles. Some of her directing credits include; Thank You for Coming.Take Care by Stacey Rose at Court Theatre, Ashes of Light by Marco Antonio Rodriguez, La Gringa by Carmen Rivera.She is also an Executive Producer for the web series 50 Blind Dates with Melissa DuPrey and has written for web series Ruby's World Yo created by Marilyn Camacho, Season 1 episode 3 and Season 2 episodes 1-4.
Thursday, April 27
Film Screening: Candela
Rey Andújar es autor de las novelas El hombre triángulo y Candela, seleccionada como una de las mejores novelas del 2009 por el PEN Club de Puerto Rico, re-editada recientemente por Editorial Corregidor en Argentina y llevada al cine por el director dominicano Andrés Farías Cintrón. Los cuentos de Amoricidio recibieron el Premio de Cuento Joven de la Feria del Libro en el 2007. Su colección de cuentos Saturnario ha sido traducida al inglés y fue galardonada con el Premio Letras de Ultramar 2010. Su performance Ciudadano Cero participó en el Festival Internacional de Teatro Santo Domingo 2006 y fue la pieza inaugural del Teatro Victoria Espinoza en Santurce y del Festival Internacional de Teatro en Puerto Rico, 2007. Un segundo performance, Antípoda, estrenado en el Viejo San Juan, ha sido presentado en varias ciudades de Estados Unidos, Santo Domingo, París y México.
Andújar vive entre Chicago y Santo Domingo. Es parte del Departamento de Humanidades de Governors State University y Asesor Cultural del Ministerio de Cultura de la República Dominicana. Con la tesis Formas del ascenso: estructura mitológica en Escalera para Electra de Aída Cartagena Portalatín, obtuvo el grado de Doctor en Filosofía y Letras Caribeñas por el Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. Su novela Los gestos inútiles recibió el VI Premio Alba de Narrativa Latinoamericana y Caribeña, durante la Feria del Libro de la Habana 2015 y ha sido re-editada por Ediciones La Pereza.
Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico, 1966) Narradora, ensayista, poeta y gestora cultural. Estudió Literatura en la Universidad de Puerto Rico y ha sido invitada como profesora, escritora y editora residente por múltiples universidades prestigiosas de Estados Unidos, Latinoamérica y Europa. Ha obtenido varios premios internacionales, entre los que destacan el Letras de Oro en 1994 y el Juan Rulfo en 1996, ambos en el género de cuento. Muchas de sus obras han sido traducidas al francés, inglés, alemán e italiano. Entre sus publicaciones en poesía cabe mencionar Anamú y manigua (1991), El orden escapado (1991), Mal (h)ablar: Antología de nueva literatura puertorriqueña (1997) y Tercer Mundo (1999). Ha publicado los libros de cuentos Pez de vidrio (1995), Pez de vidrio y otros cuentos (1996) y El cuerpo correcto (1997), entre otros; y las novelas Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000) y Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (2003), Nuestra señora de la noche (2008), La amante de Gardel (2015), Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (2016), Fe en disfraz (2017); y Antes que llegue la luz (2021).
Andrés Farías Cintrón is a director and assistant director from the Dominican Republic graduated from San Antonio de los Baños Film School (Cuba); he also has a degree in Advertising and a Master’s degree in Film, TV and Interactive Media in Madrid, Spain.
In 2014 he won the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection Award for his video installation Honey Pot. In 2015, he was selected for the Emerging Leaders of the Americas Program (ELAP) for his research project on the representation of the Caribbean Women in Film.
He teaches in different universities and has worked as assistant of director for different films such as Cocote (Signs of Life Award in Locarno FF 2017), Woodpeckers (Sundance FF 2017, Baby Girl (Rotterdam FF 2023) and Croma Kid (Rotterdam FF 2023).
His first Feature Film “Candela” was supported by the Sundance Institute and the French Institute. It premiered in 2021 as the opening film of the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and the Biarritz Film Festival in which he won the Jury Prize. The film has been shown in more than 15 festivals around the world and has won several prizes.