Interview with Patrick Rosal. Sunday, September 2nd, 2012.

41: Patrick Rosal, author of “Boneshepherds” and “My American Kundiman” talks about how his latest collection negotiates anger by love, and both Saenz and Rosal honor Baldwin’s work as a teacher for such navigation. Rosal’s Uncle Charlie was as influential to his work as Neruda and Philip Levine and the guest reads a poem from “Boneshepherds” – “Bienvenido: Santo Tomas,” for his Uncle Charlie.  www.patrickrosal.com. 

                             (Photo credit Peter Dressel)

This week’s Poetic License comes from Daniel Chacon.

Interview with Lee & Bobby Byrd. Sunday, April 15th, 2012.

29: Ben & Daniel talk with Lee & Bobby Byrd, owners & publishers for Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso. They talk about how they were introduced to the world of publishing, and how Cinco Puntos became a home for books no one else would publish because they connected so closely with the border culture. They also talk about the poetry collection “Beauty is a Verb” which features works written by writers with disabilities.

The Poem of the Week is read by Bobby Byrd, and comes from the “Beauty is a Verb” collection. “Avoiding Rigidity” by Hal Sirowitz, who lives with Parkinson’s Disease.

Writer Denise Chávez will also be talking about the upcoming Border Book Festival, which takes place April 19-22 in Mesilla NM.



Bobby Byrd, poet, essayist and publisher—grew up in Memphis, Tennessee during the golden age of that city’s music. In 1963 he went to Tucson where he attended the University of Arizona. Since then he has lived in the American Southwest. In 1978 he and his wife—novelist Lee Merrill Byrd—moved to El Paso, Texas with their three children. The city and the border region has become their home.

Bobby Byrd, the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the NEA, a D.H. Lawrence fellowship, and an international fellowship to study in Mexico, is one of the most accessible poets writing today. His work is compassionate, tender & joyful. He is the author of numerous books of poetry including Pomegranates, Get Some Fuses for the House, On the Transmigration of Souls in El Paso, The Price of Doing Business in Mexico, and his most recent, White Panties, Dead Friends & Other Bits & Pieces of Love.

He and Lee are publishers and owners of Cinco Puntos Press. In 2005 they received the Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom. Click here to read about the Lannan Foundation award!

(Taken from http://www.cincopuntos.com/authors_detail.sstg?id=4 )

Lee Merrill Byrd, novelist and publisher, was born and raised in New Jersey but has spent most of her life in the Southwest. In 1985, with her husband, poet Bobby Byrd, she founded Cinco Puntos Press, a publishing company named after their neighborhood in El Paso, Texas. Cinco Puntos—a publisher of non-fiction, fiction, poetry and children’s literature—is recognized for bringing the multicultural literatures of the American Southwest, the U.S./Mexico border region and Mexico to a national audience. Lee and Bobby have three children and five grandchildren.

Lee’s collection of short stories, My Sister Disappears, was published by Southern Methodist University Press in 1993. It received a Southwest Book Award and the Stephen F. Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for the best first work of fiction in 1993. In 1997, she was the recipient of the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship. In 2005, she and her husband received Cultural Freedom Fellowships from the Lannan Foundation.

In October 2003, Cinco Puntos published Lee’s first picture book for children, The Treasure on Gold Street, A Neighborhood Story in Spanish and English. It received a Skipping Stones Honor Book Award, a Southwest Book Award, a Paterson Poetry Center Prize, and a Teddy Award from the Texas Writers League.

Cinco Puntos published Lover Boy, A Bilingual Counting Book, in the Fall of 2005. In the Spring of 2006, Algonquin Books published Lee’s first novel, Riley's Fire. People Magazine chose Riley's Fire as one of the top 10 books of 2006.

Interview with Benjamin Alire Saenz . Sunday, April 1st, 2012.

Extended interview with Benjamin Alire Saenz.



27: Daniel interviews his co-host, Benjamin Alire Saenz, about his new young adult novel, “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.” The book, which is set in El Paso in the 1980s, tells the story of loner teen Aristotle who befriends fellow teen, Dante, who is the exact opposite of himself.



In this week’s Poetic License, Daniel reflects on Chicano masculinity and its different incarnations in his life.

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.

Interview with Marcia Hatfield Daudistel. Sunday, February 19th, 2012.

21: Daniel talks with Marcia Hatfield Daudistel, editor of “Grace and Gumption: The Women of El Paso” and “Literary El Paso.” Daudistel talks about the struggles in convincing an out-of-town publisher that El Paso had a plethora of writers to contribute to its “Literary” series. She also talks about “Grace and Gumption” and the upcoming publication of “Authentic Texas: The People of the Big Bend.”

Daudistel also reads this week’s Poem of the Week: Pat Mora’s “Desert Women.”

And in this week’s Poetic License, UTEP Creative Writing professor Jose de Pierola reflects on “The Dream of the Perfect Language.”