Interview with Melinda Palacio. Sunday, February 26th, 2012.

22: Daniel and guest co-host Sasha Pimentel-Chacon talk with Melinda Palacio, author of “Ocotillo Dreams” and “Folsom Lockdown.” Palacio talks about her upcoming collection of poems, “How Fire is a Story Waiting,” and how a visit to her estranged father in prison inspired the poetry chapbook, “Folsom Lockdown.”

The Poem of the Week was written by, and is ready by, Melinda Palacio – “Abluela’s Higuera.”

Writer & educator Oscar Bermeo contributes to this week’s Poetic License, with a reflection on why he cannot label himself a “Latino writer.”



Melinda Palacio grew up in South Central Los Angeles and now lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans. She also writes a Friday column for La Bloga.com. Palacio holds two degrees in Comparative Literature, a B.A. from Berkeley and an M.A. from UC Santa Cruz. Melinda is a 2007 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellow and a 2009 alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her poetry chapbook, Folsom Lockdown, won Kulupi Press’ Sense of Place cash prize and publication, Spring 2010. Her work has been published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies, including the Arizona Republic, BorderSenses, the East Valley and Scottsdale Tribune, Phoenix Magazine, Sage Trail Poetry Magazine, Buffalo Carp, Black Renaissance Noire, the Valley Voice, PALABRA: a Magazine of Chicano/Latino Literary Art, Poets and Artists, the Maple Leaf Rag III and IV, La Bloga, Askew Poetry Journal, Latinos in Lotus Land: an Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, Poets of the American West, Strange Cargo, El Tecolote, San Pedro River Review, Pilgrimage Magazine, Quercus Review, Eleven Eleven, the Mas Tequila Review, Hinchas de Poesia, the San Diego Poetry Annual, and Southern Poetry Anthology. Arizona State University’s Bilingual Review Press published her first novel, Ocotillo Dreams, Summer 2011. She enjoys public speaking and sharing her knowledge of writing and publishing through workshops, lectures, and panels. Tia Chucha Press will publish her full length poetry book, How Fire Is A Story, Waiting, Fall 2012.