FRS 2022

^{photo © Lizz Huerta}

Banned Books/Lives: author Lizz Huerta

Wednesday, September 21, 2022, 7-8:15PM

Location: Griffin Gate (Bldg. 60)

Register for this event: tinyurl.com/2lkfhbvr

Lizz Huerta is a widely admired Mexi-Rican short story writer and essayist. Named by Buzzfeed as "Most Anticipated 2022" selection, her debut book, The Lost Dreamer (Macmillan, 2022), is a YA fantasy inspired by ancient Mesoamerica. Huerta's short story, “The Wall,” is anthologized in A People’s Future of the United States. She is also published in Lightspeed, The Cut, The Portland Review, The Rumpus, Miami Rail, and more. Huerta has also been a 2018 Bread Loaf Fellow, a five-time VONA Fellow, and the winner of the LUMINA fiction contest, selected by Roxane Gay, who called her writing “a menacing inescapable seduction.” She has appeared on CSPAN’s BookTV to discuss the erasure of Mexican American Studies in Arizona, and has taught creative writing to homeless youth through San Diego nonprofit So Say We All. Lizz Huerta's official author website: lizzhuerta.com.

^{Photo credit: Felicia Zamora}

poet Diana Marie Delgado

Tuesday, October 4, 2022, 7-8:15PM

Location: Griffin Gate (Bldg. 60)

Register for this event: tinyurl.com/2mcmaoyj 

Diana Marie Delgado is the author of Late-Night Talks With Men I Think I Trust (Center for Book Arts, 2015), and Tracing the Horse (2019). Delgado is the literary director of the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona and has advanced social justice and the arts by her more than twenty years of work in not-for-profits, including The Clinton Foundation, Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, and now the University of Arizona Poetry Center. A published poet, her first collection, Tracing the Horse, was a New York Times Noteworthy Pick and follows the coming-of-age of a young Mexican-American woman trying to make sense of who she is amidst a family and community weighted by violence and addiction. Her chapbook, Late-Night Talks with Men I Think I Trust, was the 2018 Center for Book Arts winner. Delgado's many published poems appear in Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, New York Times Magazine, Colorado Review, Tin House, and others. Her literary interests are rooted in her experiences growing up Chicana in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California. She carries a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Breadloaf, and the James D. Phelan Foundation. She is a CORO leadership fellow and member of the Iyengar Foundation. A playwright as well, Delgado had directed plays at both INTAR and La MaMa. She is a member of the CantoMundo and Macondo writing communities. She is the editor of the upcoming poetry anthology, Like a Hammer Across The Page, Poets Writing Against Mass Incarceration (Haymarket Books, Spring 2024). Diana Marie Delgado's official author website: dianamariedelgado.com.

Lester Bangs Memorial Faculty Reading

Thursday, November 10, 12:30-1:45PM

Location: Griffin Gate (Bldg. 60)

Register for this event: tinyurl.com/2lv2t7yj 

A reading of original poetry and prose by Grossmont College faculty:

• Raul Sandelin (an introduction to Lester Bangs)

• Candace Hartsuyker (flash fiction)

• Enrique Cervantes (fiction)

• Sarita Tanori (creative nonfiction)

• Karl Sherlock (poetry)

About the Presenters:

• Grossmont College English instructor and writer for alternative music periodical, San Diego Troubadour, Raul Sandelin is a filmmaker, writer, and creative director who has produced and directed two feature-length films on the counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s: Ticket to Write, and A Box Full of Rocks: The El Cajon Years of Lester Bangs. 

• Candace Hartsuyker has an M.F.A in Creative Writing and an M.A in English Literature from McNeese State University. She has been published in Fiction Southeast, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She is a SDICCCA Fellow at Grossmont College and teaches Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State University. 

• Fiction writer, poet, San Diego native, and former Grossmont College student, Enrique Cervantes holds a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. His work has appeared in Aztec Literary Review, The Writer, The Blue Agave Literary Journal, San Diego City Beat, as well as the anthology The Far East: Everything Just As It Is. Enrique teaches the Fiction Writing workshop at Grossmont College and is hoping to finish his novel, The Ghost Dance, in the next few months.

• A graduate of San Diego State University’s Rhetoric and Writing Studies program and an ethnic studies educator, Sarita Tanori is a creative nonfiction writer and poet. Of Opata and Yaqui descent from San Diego with familial roots in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, her work centers around immigrant families, intergenerational trauma, fear, and male fantasies.

• Karl Sherlock carries an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from U.C. Irvine and an M.A. in English from UW-Milwaukee. His recent poetry and nonfiction appear (or are forthcoming) in After Happy Hour, Assaracus, Broken Lens, Lime Hawk, Matador Review, Mollyhouse, RockPaperPoem, Stoneboat, Tinge, Wordgathering, and others, as well as in the 2022 dis-lit anthology, The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet. A Sundress "Best of the Net" finalist in 2014 for his memoir essay about marrying a conversion therapy torture survivor, Karl co-coordinates Grossmont College’s Creative Writing Program and will lead the Spring 2023 Poetry Writing workshop online.

About Lester Bangs:

Held annually during the fall semester, the Lester Bangs Memorial Reading honors Grossmont College alumnus and El Cajon native, Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs, recognized by most as “America’s Greatest Rock Critic” and considered one of the most influential voices in rock criticism. (Bangs is widely credited for coining the terms "punk" and "heavy metal.”) Born in Escondido, California, Bangs and his mother moved to El Cajon when he was eleven years old. After attending Grossmont Junior College from 1966 to 1968, he moved to Detroit to work for CREEM Magazine, and later to New York City to write for Rolling Stone. He has come to be regarded as among the best American rock journalists of all time. Lester Bangs died in 1982. In 2010, he was officially recognized as a Grossmont College celebrity alumnus and honored with his own bronze "Walk of Fame" plaque, located in the Main Quad, in front of the Tech Mall.

^{Acorn  Review cover, 2021}

New Voices: A Student Reading

Monday, December 5, 2022, 7-8:15PM

Location: Room 220, Bldg. 26

Register for this event: tinyurl.com/2o3236cs