Interview with Rigoberto González. Sunday, January 15th, 2012.

16: Daniel & Ben talk with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez. He talks about his latest book “Black Blossoms,” his role as a book critic, and about his young adult novel, “Mariposa Club.”

The Poem of the Week is CK Williams “Racist” from his collection “Flesh & Blood.” Read by Benjamin Alire Saenz.

In this week’s Poetic License, local writer Richard Yanez shares 44 Blessings upon celebrating a recent birthday.

Rigoberto González is the author of two poetry books, So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks, a National Poetry Series selection, and Other Fugitives and Other Strangers; two bilingual children’s books: Soledad Sigh-Sighs and Antonio’s Card; the novel Crossing Vines, winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Fiction Book of the Year Award; and a memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa. His book of stories Men without Bliss, is forthcoming in 2008. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and of various international artist residencies, he writes twice a month a Latino book column, now entering its sixth year, for the El Paso Times of Texas. He is contributing editor for Poets & Writers, on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/ Latino activist writers. He lives in New York City and teaches at the MFA writing programs of both Queens College and Rutgers University—Newark.

(Taken from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/rigoberto-gonzalez )

Interview with Camille Dungy. Sunday, January 8th, 2012. 11:30 a.m.

15: Daniel & Ben talk with writer Camille Dungy, author of “Smith Blue” and “Suck on the Marrow.” She talks about why she chose to go the awards-submission route instead of directly publishing “Smith Blue.” She also talks about the extensive research she undertook in writing “Suck on the Marrow”.

The Poem of the Week is by the late Andres Montoya – “The Rains Have Left and Ernesto is Dead,” read by Daniel Chacon.

In this week’s Poetic License, writer Daniel A. Olivas talks about reading Chicano literature to non-Chicano audiences.



Camille Dungy is author of Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize, Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010), and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006).

Dungy is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Dungy has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Cave Canem, the Dana Award, and Bread Loaf.

She is a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award (2010 and 2011), a Silver Medal Winner in the California Book Award (2011), and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee (2010 and 2011). She was a2011 finalist for the Balcones Prize, and her books have been shortlisted for the 2011 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, the PEN Center USA 2007 Literary Award, and the Library of Virginia 2007 Literary Award. Dungy is currently a Professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. Her poems and essays have been published widely in anthologies and print and online journals.

(Taken from http://www.camilledungy.com/Biography.htm )

Interview with Brian Turner. Sunday, December 18th, 2011.

12: Ben & Daniel talk with poet Brian Turner, author of “Here, Bullet” and “Phantom Noise.” Turner spent 7 years in the US Army and served in Iraq and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He talks about his time in the military and how it inspires his work.

The Poem of the Week is by US Poet Laureate, Philip Levine – “They Feed They Lion,” read by Daniel Chacon.

And, this week’s Poetic License comes from Fred Arroyo, who reads a short selection from his book “Western Avenue and Other Fictions.”



Brian Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before serving for seven years in the U.S. Army. He was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Then in November 2003 he was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. His first book, Here, Bullet, chronicles his time in Iraq.

Turner has been featured on National Public Radio, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer and the BBC. He has received a NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship and a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Turner has taught English at Fresno City College.

(Taken from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/brian-turner )

Interview with Garrett Hongo. Sunday, December 11th, 2011.

11: Ben & Daniel talk with Hawaiian poet & writer Garrett Hongo, who discusses his latest book “Coral Road,” and talks about the importance of attracting more multicultural writers to publish their works.

The Poem of the Week is Alberto Rios’ “Day of the Refugios,” read by Benjamin Saenz.


And co-host Daniel Chacon contributes to this week’s Poetic License, with a reflection on the tenuous, yet firm, connections between quantum physics and poetry.


Garrett Hongo. Japanese American poet, Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawai'i, in 1951. He attended Pomona University and the University of Michigan. He received his MFA in English from the University of California at Irvine.

His collections of poetry include Coral Road: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011); The River of Heaven (1988), which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Yellow Light (1982). He is also the author of Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai'i (1995), and he has edited Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays and Memoir by Wakako Yamauchi (1994) and The Open Boat: Poems from Asian America (1993).

His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon at Eugene, where he directed the Program in Creative Writing from 1989 to 1993.

(Taken from http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/166 )

Interview with Alison Deming. Sunday, December 4th, 2011.

10: Daniel & Ben talk with poet, essayist, and teacher, Alison Hawthorne Deming. She talks about how her move from New England to Arizona affected her writing, and how science & nature inform her work.

The Poem of the Week is Maurice Kilwein Guevara’s “Dona Josefina Counsels Dona Concepcion Before Entering Sears,” read by Ben Saenz.

And on this week’s “Poetic License,” writer Rosa Alcalá, professor of Creating Writing at UTEP, reflects on the Occupy Wall Street protests and her past career as a temp.


Alison Hawthorne Deming was born and grew up in Connecticut. She is the author of Science and Other Poems (LSU Press, 1994), selected by Gerald Stern for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; three additional poetry books, The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence (LSU, 1997), Genius Loci (Penguin, 2005), and Rope (Penguin, 2009); and three nonfiction books, Temporary Homelands (Mercury House, 1994; Picador USA, 1996), The Edges of the Civilized World (Picador USA, 1998), finalist for the PEN Center West Award, and Writing the Sacred Into the Real (Milkweed, Credo Series). She has recently completed a new nonfiction book titled Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit.

She edited Poetry of the American West: A Columbia Anthology (Columbia University Press, 1996) and coedited with Lauret E. Savoy The Colors of Nature: Essays on Culture, Identity, and the Natural World (Milkweed, 2002; revised and expanded edition, 2011). Deming’s small press works include two limited edition chapbooks, Girls in the Jungle: What Does It Take For a Woman to Survive in the Arts (Kore Press, 1995) and Anatomy of Desire: The Daughter/Mother Sessions (Kore, 2000), a collaboration with her daughter, the artist Lucinda Bliss.

Deming received an MFA from Vermont College (1983), a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University (1987-88), two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1990, 1995), and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Tucson/Pima Arts Council, and a National Writer’s Voice Residency Award, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod, a Pushcart Prize, the Gertrude B. Claytor Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Bayer Award in Science Writing from Creative Nonfiction for the essay “Poetry and Science: A View From the Divide.” She has held residencies at Yaddo, Cummington Community of the Arts, Djerassi Foundation, Mesa Refuge, The Island Institute in Alaska, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon.

She has served on the faculty of the Prague Summer Program, Taos Summer Writer’s Conference, University of Montana’s Environmental Writing Institute, Indiana University Writers’ Conference, and as Poet-in-Residence at the Jacksonville (FL) Zoo and Gardens, among many other venues.

Her poems and essays have been widely published and anthologized, including in The Georgia Review, Orion, Isotope, Southwestern American Literature, Parthenon West, Sierra, Gnosis, Verse and Universe: Poems on Science and Mathematics, The Norton Book of Nature Writing, and Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Former Director of the University of Arizona Poetry (1990-2002), she currently is Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona and also serves as Chairperson of the Board of Directors for Orion magazine. She lives in Tucson, Arizona and Grand Manan, New Brunswick.

(Taken from http://www.alisonhawthornedeming.com/media/bio.htm)



Rosa Alcalá received her MFA from Brown University and her Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 2003, Some Maritime Disasters This Century was published as a limited edition by Belladonna/Boog Books (New York). Undocumentaries, a selection of poems, is forthcoming from Dos Press. Her poems have also appeared in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, edited by Francisco Aragón (U of AZ Press, 2007), and Cinturones de óxido: de Buffalo con amor / Rust Belt Encounters: From Buffalo with Love, translated by Ernesto Livón-Grosman and Omar Pérez (Torre de Letras, La Habana, Cuba, 2005).

Alcalá has translated Cecilia Vicuña’s El Templo (Situations Press, 2001 ) and Cloud-net (Art in General, 1999). Her translation of Vicuña’s essay-poem, “Ubixic del Decir, ‘Its Being Said’: A Reading of a Reading of the Popol Vuh,” was published in With Their Hands and Their Eyes: Maya Textiles, Mirrors of a Worldview, Etnografish Museum (Belgium, 2003). Alcalá’s translation of Bestiary: The Selected Poems of Lourdes Vázquez was published by Bilingual Press in 2004.

Forthcoming is a co-translation (with Mónica de la Torre) of Lila Zemborain's Malvas Orquídeas del Mar/ Mauve Sea Orchids (Belladonna). She has also translated poems for the forthcoming Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. Her poems, translations, and reviews have been published widely in a variety of literary journals, including the Barrow Street, Brooklyn Rail, tripwire, Kenyon Review, and Mandorla.

She has held artist residencies and has given talks and readings in the U.S., Spain, Cuba, and Scotland.

(Taken from http://faculty.utep.edu/Default.aspx?alias=faculty.utep.edu/ralcala1)

Interview with Carl Philips. Sunday, November 20th, 2011.

8: Ben & Daniel talk to American writer, Carl Phillips, whose latest book is "Double Shadow." He discusses why his natural restlessness works its way into his poems, and why he likes to incorporate a variety of styles into his works.

The Poem of the Week features excerpts from the memoir "Shortbread" by Sonja Livingston.

And this week's Poetic License is a counterpoint to last week's segment. Poet Liz Scheid talks about why she refuses to pay to see her work published with BlazeVOX Publishing.

Carl Phillips is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Speak Low (2009) and Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986-2006. Other books include his translation of Sophocles's Philocetes(2003) and Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry (2004). His new book, Double Shadow, has just been published by Farrar, Staus and Giroux. A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, he has received honors that include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Poetry Award, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Library of Congress. In 2006, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

(Taken from http://connotationpress.com/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/2010/july-2010/502-carl-phillips-poetry )

Interview with Francisco Aragon. Sunday, November 13th, 2011.

7: Ben & Daniel talk with Francisco Aragon, director of Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame. He talks about how his time in Madrid inspired his writing, and why he created the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize.

The Poem of the Week is William Carlos Williams’ “At the Ballpark,” read by Benjamin Saenz.

And in this week’s Poetic License, Stacia M. Fleegel defends why she is ok with paying $250 to have her work published with BlazeVOX Publishing, a practice frowned upon by other writers.
A native of San Francisco, Francisco Aragón is the author of Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press) and Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press), as well as the editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including, Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies (W.W. Norton & Company), American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement (University of Iowa Press), Evensong: Contemporary American Poets on Spirituality (Bottom Dog Press) and, Deep Travel: Contemporary American Poets Abroad (Ninebark Press). His poems and translations have appeared in various print and web publications, including, Chain, Crab Orchard Review, Chelsea, The Journal, the online journals, Jacket, Electronic Poetry Review, and Poetry Daily. Among his limited edition chapbooks are, Tertulia, (BOOKlyn). Aragón holds degrees in Spanish from the University of California at Berkeley and New York University, and an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Davis and the University of Notre Dame, respectively. He is the director of Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the editor of Canto Cosas, a book series out of Bilingual Press that publishes Latino poetry. He is a member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop in San Antonio, TX and serves as a Vice President on the board of directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

(Taken from http://franciscoaragon.net/ )

Interview with Chang-Rae Lee. Sunday, November 6th, 2011.

6: Daniel interviews friend & writer Chang-Rae Lee, author “Native Speaker” and “The Surrendered.” Find out why he chose a profession as a writer and professor, and why it isn’t pretentious to be emotionally involved in your work.

The Poem of the Week is Denise Levertov’s “In California During the Gulf War,” read by Benjamin Saenz.

And, in this week’s Poetic License, poet Michael Luis Medrano ponders the Second Book Blues.

Chang-rae Lee, the first Korean-American novelist to be published by a major press, focuses on the experiences of first-and second-generation immigrants. His novels explore the nuances of intergenerational relations, the problems of assimilation, and the relationship of culture and memory to identity. While these concerns link him to other contemporary Asian-American writers, Lee's fiction also draws heavily on other influences. Lee experiments with form in his first novel, Native Speaker, which is part detective story, part minimalist chronicle of a failing marriage, reminiscent of John Updike. His prose style has been compared to that of both John Cheever and Kazuo Ishiguro.

(Taken from http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4525/Lee-Chang-rae.html)

Extended interviews with Aaron Michael Morales and Sergio Troncoso.

Extended interviews with Aaron Michael Morales and Sergio Troncoso. October 30th, 2011.





Press play to listen to (Podcasting) of Words on a wire from Sunday, October 30th, 2011.

Interview with Lorraine Lopez. Sunday, October 23rd, 2011. 11:30 a.m.

4: Ben & Daniel talk with Lorraine Lopez, author of "Soy La Avon Lady and Other Stories" and "The Realm of Hungry Spirits," among other works. She talks about looking back on her older works, and how living in the South (she is an Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University) affects her writing.

The Poems of the Week are from the late American poet, Stanley Kunitz.

This week's Poetic License contribution is by Hawaii resident Craig Santos Perez, who reads a poem by Hawaiian poet, Juan Malo, which was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Lorraine M. López teaches in the Master of Fine Arts Program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and she is an associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Voices of Mexico, CrazyHorse, Image, Cimarron Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly/Narrative Magazine, and Latino Boom. Her short story collection, Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (Curbstone Press, 2002) won the inaugural Miguel Marmol prize for fiction. Her second book, Call Me Henri (Curbstone Press 2006) was awarded the Paterson Prize for Young Adult Literature, and her novel, The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters, released in October of 2008 from Grand Central Press, is a Borders/Las Comadres Selection for the month of November. Lopez´s short story collection, Homicide Survivors Picnic, is due out from BkMk Press in September 2009, and she has edited a collection of essays titled An Angle of Vision: Women Writers Discuss Their Poor Or Working Class Roots that is due out in December from the University of Michigan Press.

(Taken from http://www.vanderbilt.edu/english/lorraine_lopez )