Interview with Reyna Grande. Sunday, August 26 th, 2012.

41: Ben & Daniel are back for a brand new season! This show talks with Reyna Grande, author of the new memoir "The Distance Between Us." She talks about why she was hesitant to write a memoir, why "cucuys" have played important roles in her life and writing process, and why she has a penchant for killing her characters.

http://www.reynagrande.com

Interview with Roberto Perezdiaz. Sunday, July 8 th, 2012.

40: Roberto Perezdiaz talks about how his short story collection, "Mas Sabe el Diablo," handles both innocence and maturity. He spent a year as a court translator, and Spanish-to-English translation work helped him craft language.

Interview with Craig Santos Perez. Sunday, July 1st, 2012.

39: Craig Santos Perez, author of "from unincorporated territory [saina],"  talks about Guam, writing [saina], and that poetry’s relationship to neo-colonialization and the history of colonialization, cannot be neutral. Words inspire his activism as a “tongue is the steering paddle of the mouth.” Even as Perez lectures at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, his international presence as a performer and activist allow him to weave his complexities as a migrant and immigrant into his work.

Daniel reads selections from a forthcoming posthumous collection of "Leukemia Poems" by Andrés Montoya, written when the late writer was in the hospital dying of leukemia.

Interview with Javier O. Huerta. Sunday, June 17th, 2012.

37: Javier O. Huerta, whose latest book, "American Copia," captures the American immigrant experience through stories about the everyday grocery shopping grind. Huerta also talks about how the book grew out of a sentence that was assigned to him during his naturalization process. Huerta, Daniel, and Ben also engage in a discussion about whether "bad poetry" can still be good poetry. This week's Poem of the Week is "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," read by Daniel Chacon. This week's Poetic License features a contribution by Ire'ne Lara Silva, who reflects on "The Necessity of Nakedness. www.irenelarasilva.webs.com

Javier O. Huerta is a Mexican-American and Chicano poet. His first book Some Clarifications y otros poemas (Arte Publico 2007) was awarded the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California at Irvine. Personal background Huerta was born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico and immigrated to the United States with his mother and younger brother, crossing the Rio Grande river (Rio Bravo) in 1981. In 1986, he gained legal residency under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and became a US citizen in January 2000 after serving four years in the United States Navy. As of 2012, he resides in the Bay Area, California. Professional background Huerta also studies the laughter of poetry in the English PhD program at the University of California at Berkeley, where he teaches the following courses, "Politics and Poetics of Refusal," "Documents and the Literature of the Undocumented," and "Laughter and Literature.

Ire’ne lara silva has lived in Austin, TX since 1998. In that time, she has participated in many readings, coordinated writing workshops and literary festivals, edited a few literary magazines, and participated/coordinated in events with Red Salmon Arts/Resistencia Bookstore, Austin Hispanic Writers, and the Lunada Poetry Series, among others. From 2004 to 2008, she was the Executive Coordinator for the Macondo Writing Workshop/Macondo Foundation. She and Moises S. L. Lara are currently co-coordinators for the Flor De Nopal Literary Festival (December 2012) http://flordenopalliteraryfestival.wordpress.com/ ire’ne is also leading the Voz te ‘Viento discussion series on diabetes, illness, healing, and creativity: http://vozteviento.wordpress.com/

Interview with Sasha Pimentel Chacón. Sunday, October 16th, 2011.

3: An Interview with Sasha Pimentel Chacón

Our poem of the week is by Rick Barot (Read by Sasha Pimentel Chacón)

And this week, in our continuing series, “Poetic License,” Maceo Montoya
reflects on a writer finding a job.

Sasha Pimentel Chacón born in Manila and raised in Atlanta, Saudi Arabia and the NYC tri-state region, Sasha Pimentel Chacón is a Filipina-American poet and the author of Insides She Swallowed (2010), a book of poems on culture, immigration, food and the body. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals such as The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review and OCHO, and she is the recipient of a Philip Levine Fellowship and the Ernesto Trejo Prize. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lectures and performs around the country.
SHE HOLDS an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno and teaches as a Visiting Assistant Professor / Visiting Writer at the University of Texas at El Paso's Bilingual (Spanish-English) M.F.A. Program, for poets and writers from all over the Americas. Her research includes prosody, poetics, contemporary American poetry, and Asian American, Latina/Latino, immigrant, and women's literatures.
SHE CURRENTLY lives in El Paso, Texas, on the border of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico with her husband, fiction author Daniel Chacón, and their dogs Kafka and Sonnet.
(Taken from http://www.sashapimentel.com/ )

Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera. Sunday, October 2d, 2011. 11:30 a.m.

1!: An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera.

Our Poem of the week is poem by Carl Phillips. (Read by Benjamin Alire Sáenz )

"Poetic license", Lee Herrick, speaks about community.

Juan Felipe Herrera holds the Tomás Rivera endowed chair in creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of numerous poetry volumes, including Half of the World in Light; 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007; Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream; and numerous children's books, including The Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical in New York City; Laughing Out Loud, I Fly, winner of a Pura Belpré Honor; and Cinnamon Girl, winner of the Américas Award. He was also awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives and tours with the poet Margarita Luna Robles.