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News Release — April 12, 2012

Rolando Hinojosa, Arturo Madrid, Carmen Tafolla

Rolando Hinojosa, Arturo Madrid, Carmen Tafolla
Rolando Hinojosa by Marsha Miller | Arturo Madrid, courtesy of Trinity University | Carmen Tafolla, courtesy of San Antonio Express-News

Leading Latino authors featured at readings and a panel discussion for the symposium “Voces y Memorias” / "Voices & Memories"

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012, 6:30 PM

Admission is free and open to the public
 

At 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25, 2012, the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos will co-host “Voces y Memorias” / “Voices & Memories” — a symposium featuring celebrated authors Rolando Hinojosa-Smith and Arturo Madrid. Carmen Tafolla, named San Antonio’s inaugural poet laureate on March 27, will also be participating. The Wittliff Collections are located on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library at Texas State University-San Marcos. Admission is free and open to the public. Directions are online at http://www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu.
Highlights of this major event will include Hinojosa and Madrid reading from their new books, a discussion among the authors, moderated by Carmen Tafolla, about the craft of writing from a Mexican American perspective, and a book signing with all three esteemed writers. Their books will be for sale at the event. For further information, contact Dr. Jaime Chahin, Dean of Applied Arts at tc03@txstate.edu or 512.245.3333.

A novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story writer, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith is perhaps the preeminent novelist from the Rio Grande Valley. He is the Ellen Clayton Garwood Professor of English at the University of Texas-Austin and the recipient of numerous literary honors, including the Premio Quinto Sol Annual Prize, and the oldest and most prestigious award in Latin American fiction, the Casa de las Américas Prize. Arte Publico press recently published Hinojosa’s collection In My Own Voice: Stories and Essays, as well as a new edition of Partners in Crime, which is part of his continuing 15-novel series, Klail City Death Trip.

The descendent of a Spanish-Mexican family that settled in New Mexico at the end of the 17th century, Arturo Madrid has long been involved in the legal, educational, and cultural affairs of Latinos. In 1984 he founded the Tomás Rivera Center, the nation’s first institute for policy studies on Latino issues. A decorated critic and scholar, he is the recipient of such honors as the President’s Medal from Brooklyn College, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ford Salute to Higher Education, the Charles Frankel Prize (later renamed the National Humanities Medal) from the President of the United States of America, and many, many others. He is the Norene R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at San Antonio’s Trinity University, which is the publisher of Madrid’s family memoir, In the Country of Empty Crosses: The Story of a New Mexico Hispano Protestant Family, with images by acclaimed photographer Miguel Gandert.

Carmen Tafolla—named the inaugural Poet Laureate of San Antonio on March 27 by Mayor Julián Castro—is one of the most anthologized of living Latina writers. She has published work for both children and adults in more than two hundred anthologies, magazines, journals, textbooks, and readers, and is the author of more than fifteen books, seven screenplays, and numerous articles and essays. Dr. Tafolla’s book of poetry, Sonnets to Human Beings, received the First Prize in the Poetry Division of the UCI National Literary Competition, and in 1999, she was awarded the Art of Peace Award by the President’s Peace Commission of St. Mary’s University for “writing which contributes to peace, justice and human understanding.”
This event is co-sponsored by Texas State’s Department of English, the Department of Modern Languages, the College of Education, the College of Applied Arts, the Office of Equity and Access, the Kappa Delta Chi sorority, the Omega Delta Phi fraternity, and the Wittliff Collections.