^{photo © Alex Espinoza}

Banned Books/Lives:

^novelist Alex Espinoza

Thursday, October 5, 11AM-12:20PM

Location: Performing and Visual Arts Center Theatre

Tijuana-born novelist Alex Espinoza is the author of Still Water Saints (Random House, 2007), a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, The Five Acts of Diego León (Random House, 2013), and Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime (Unnamed Press 2019).

In Cruising, Espinoza draws parallels between events during the COVID crisis and the AIDS crisis of the ‘80s, including the ways in which intimacy cost lives and heightened radical behaviors. A book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, American Book Review, and NPR’s All Things Considered, Espinoza’s fiction and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Inlandia, Latinos in Lotusland, Huizache, Silent Voices, The Southern California Review, Salon.com, the New York Times Magazine, and The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity. Espinoza is an associate professor of English at CSU-Fresno, where he is currently working on a new novel.

^{photo © Brandon Som / UCSD}

^poet Brandon Som

Tuesday, October 24, 2-3:20PM

Location: PVAC Theatre

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Brandon Som is the author of Babel’s Moon (Tupelo, 2011), winner of a Snowbound Chapbook Award, and The Tribute Horse (Nightboat, 2014), winner of a Nightboat Poetry Prize and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The Tribute Horse explores the story of Chinese immigrants like Som’s grandfather, who circumvented the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in 1928 by falsely claiming kin with Chinese Americans.

His latest book, Tripas (Georgia Review Books 2023), is a follow-up to The Tribute Horse and a collection of poems built out of a multicultural, multigenerational childhood home, in which he celebrates his Chicana grandmother, who worked nights on the assembly line at Motorola, and his Chinese American father and grandparents, who ran the family corner store. Som’s poetry appears in Barrow Street, Indiana Review, Black Warrior Review, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. A former Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellow, Som currently is an assistant professor in the literature department at UCSD.

^{photo © Brooke Binkowski}

Lester Bangs Memorial Reading

^journalist Brooke Binkowski

Wednesday, November 15, 12:30-1:45PM

Location: Zoom

Register to attend: https://tinyurl.com/2buseh24

Brooke Binkowski is a professional multimedia journalist whose career and interests have taken her to Mexico, Alaska, Europe, North Africa, and  South America. She has also worked as a freelance border and immigration reporter while completing her UCSD master’s degree in Latin American Studies with a focus on the culture of the U.S.-Mexico Border and Mexican immigration to Anchorage, Alaska. Binkowski has  reported for NPR, CBS, and the BBC. A fact-checker for TruthOrFiction.com and a former managing editor for Snopes, Binkowski was awarded the 2017 Society of Professional Journalists Sunshine Award for her efforts to make government more transparent and hold elected leaders accountable in an emergent era of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”

About Lester Bangs:

Brooke Binkowski is this year’s featured guest presenter for the annual Lester Bangs Memorial Reading, which honors influential music journalist, author, and musician, Lester Bangs. Bangs, an El Cajon native and Grossmont College alumnus, is considered one of the most influential voices in rock criticism and 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 2009, 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.

New Voices ^{A Student Reading}

Monday, December 4, 7-8:15PM

Location: PVAC Theatre

The finale of the 2023 Fall Readings Series, New Voices, is a showcase of writing talent curated from this semester’s courses and workshops. Students are selected by Creative Writing instructors to perform original works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and hybrid forms.The latest issue of Acorn Review, Grossmont College’s own student-operated literary arts journal, will also be available for sale at the event. Many who perform in New Voices readings submit their work for publication in Acorn Review. Info and submission details @ grossmont.edu/acorn.