Two Big Events
Oct. 10, 2011 Hispanic Heritage Reading and Panel Discussion
Oct. 20, 2011 In Search of Dominguez & Escalante
Hispanic Heritage Reading and Panel Discussion
In partnership with The Provo Orem Word
Oct. 10, 2011
7:30 PM
Provo Town Square
71 E Center St
Come hear Latinas and Anglos read and discuss how Hispanic heritage affects the content, style, and marketability of their works. The authors will read poetry, personal essays, and fiction.
Featured Panelists: Mara Lucy Garcia, Patrick Madden, Julie Nelson, Sylvia Torti
Preceded by a reception with tapas in the same location at 7 p.m. The reception is $7 in advance, $10 at the door. For more information see our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165370590206226.
Mara Lucy Garcia, Associate Professor of Spanish at Brigham Young University was born and raised in Trujillo-Peru. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 1997 in Latin American literature. She is a creative writer in Spanish and she particularly likes to write short stories. Her area of specialty is Latin American prose narrative, although her interests also include theater and poetry. Her area of research includes Latin American female literature. (Inside and outside spaces, female initiation, female identity, female quest etc.) She has published several articles, interviews, book reviews on Latin American Literature and has published the book Escritoras Venezolanas de hoy, 2005 and La casa de calamina (Short stories), 1997, is co-editor of two books: Baúl de recuerdos: Homenaje a Elena Garro, 1999 (First recognition to Garro, after her death) and Todo ese fuego: Homenaje a Merlin Forster, 1999. Most of her publications to date have been on Elena Garro, Vargas Llosa, Rosario Castellanos, Bioy Casares, and Bombal among others. President-founder of Vallejo’s Institute 2002 (Utah-EEUU) and Honorary Member of Vallejo’s Institute in Trujillo-Peru, 2004. She has received several recognitions for her research on Elena Garro and work related to culture and Latin
American Literature.
As a creative writer, editor, and biographer, Garcia can comment on a variety of Latin American experience and literature. As a professor, she is used to leading discussion on these subjects. As a Latin American native who teaches about Latin American literature and culture in the United States she can comment on how U.S. and Latin American cultures interact from her personal perspective and from her observations of her students.
Patrick Madden joined the BYU English Department in 2004 after completing his Ph.D. at Ohio University. He specializes in theory and practice of the personal essay and its sister genres in literary nonfiction. He is also interested in Latin American Literature.
Madden served an LDS mission to Uruguay from 1993-1995 and later returned there as a Fulbright fellow from 2002-2003 to write his dissertation, a collection of travel essays. His wife, Katrina, is from Uruguay. His first book, Quotidiana, a collection of essays that was runner-up in the 2007 AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction, was published in early 2010 by the University of Nebraska Press. A featured author in the Utah Humanities Council’s Authors on Main Street Program, Madden will, earlier in the day, also be presenting on his book in a public school.
Julie Nelson is a poet who is an active member of Word Weavers, Utah Valley’s branch of Utah State Poetry Society. She is bilingual and has lived in Latin America. Her poems about South America were in the October 2010 issue of The Provo Orem Word’s online publication. Her personal and writing experience equip her for the panel discussion, and her roots in the community promise to appeal to a more general public.
Sylvia Torti’s novel The Scorpion’s Tail (2005) explores the struggles of indigenous people in southern Mexico during the Zapatista rebellion,where people are caught between their traditional lives and the modern world. The Mexican Zapatista Uprising that occurred in 1994 was witnessed first-hand by author Torti, giving her a unique perspective as she realized her need to understand the uprising and the many different cultures involved. Her novel interweaves points of view that are both touchingly personal and global in reach, opening up discussion around the cultural, historical, and environmental contexts of this event as well as the broader issues of dual cultures and languages within Utah. A featured author in the Utah Humanities Council’s Authors on Main Street Program, Torti will, earlier in the day, also be presenting on her book in a public school.
In Search of Dominguez & Escalante:
Photographing the 1776 Spanish Expedition through the Southwest
In partnership with the Redd Center for Western Studies
Oct. 20, 2011
7:00 PM
Brigham Young University
Conference Center #2295
770 E. University Pkwy
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Authors Greg MacGregor and Siegfried Halus will give a multi-media presentation of their text and photos of In Search of Dominguez & Escalante: Photographing the 1776 Spanish Expedition through the Southwest, followed by a Q&A, book sale and signing.
On 29 July 1776, Franciscan friars Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestro Velez de Escalante embarked on an expedition to seek an overland route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Monterey, California. Although the Spaniards did not reach their final destination, the expedition is widely regarded as one of the great explorations in western U.S. history for its documentation of the land and Native people in the Four Corners. The group - including cartographer Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, Ute-speaking guides and the Alcade (mayor) of Zuni - circumnavigated 1800 miles of unchartered territory never before seen by Europeans, an arduous five month trip documented in Escalante's journal, a widely read historical account of the exploration. More than two hundred years later Greg Mac Gregor and Siegfried Halus have created a remarkable visual record of the expedition. Using Escalante's journal as their guide, the photographers followed the expeditionary route, circling through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, and documenting the frontier as first witnessed by the Spanish explorers on horseback. The expedition passed what today are major national parks and landforms: Zion Canyon; Dinosaur Monument; and the Grand Canyon. The photographs show many areas virtually unchanged over centuries; other images reveal the passage of time in pictures of dammed rivers, power lines, and towns where once stood virgin forests. Quoting widely from "Escalante's Journal," the authors present first-hand accounts of the expedition alongside their photographic narrative. Essays by the photographers discuss their methodology and experiences as modern day explorers retracing the steps of the friars. In his historical essay, Joseph P Sanchez writes about the lasting legacy of the Spanish expeditions.
Greg Mac Gregor and Siegried Halus are renowed photographers and educators whose works have been exhibited internationally. Mac Gregor is professor emeritus of photography at California State University. He is the author of Overland: The California Emigrant Trail of 1841-1870 (University of New Mexico Press). Halus is former director of the art department of Santa Fe Community college and the author (with Marie Romero Cash) of Living Shrines: Home Alters of New Mexico (Museum of New Mexico Press). They both live in Santa Fe.