Good-bye 2010, bienvenidos 2011!

2010 was very good to me professionally, but it had some major drama. I began the year with an incredibly creative and productive one-month residency at Ragdale, where I made friends with artists I have kept in touch with throughout the year. I finished my final draft of a novel, Every Secret Thing, and sent it to a waiting editor. I wrote almost the entire first draft of a new poetry book,Dark Sister. And I applied for the NEA Individual Artist Grant (which I didn't get, unfortunately, but I was so pleased to see that my friends Blas Falconer and Michelle Boisseau did). This was all as a result of receiving the Midwest Voices and Visions Award from the Alliance for Artist Communities and the Joyce Foundation. This residency (and its accompanying stipend, which paid for transportation costs for the residency and then paid for my participation in the AWP national conference in Denver) was a huge gift to me, and its effects are still rippling throughout my life in a very positive way.


This is my writing studio in my suite at Ragdale.

















The next month, I flew back to Chicago (Ragsdale is right outside of Chicago) to read in the Guild Complex's wonderful Palabra Pura Reading Series. We had a great turnout and a very receptive audience at Decima Musa. I love all my Chicago friends!

In April, I went to the AWP with the Latino Writers Collective. I had written a proposal for us to read from our award-winning poetry anthology as a panel at AWP, and it was accepted. I worked the Scapegoat Press booth in the bookfair for a lot of the conference, but I still had a chance to attend many of the panels I wanted to see, and lots of writer and publisher friends, old and new, came by the bookfair or made appointments with me to get together. It was an exhausting but wonderful five days!


Latino Writers Collective members at the AWP after our panel presentation.










At the very end of April, we brought in Luis J. Rodriguez for LWC's Cuarta Página Reading Series. Luis is, of course, a fabulous poet and great community activist, and he worked with members of the local Latino community, as well as many LWC members, in conversation and discussion to help both groups in achieving their goals. After this whirlwind one evening and all another day--interspersed with media interviews--Luis was due to give his big public reading and talk at the Plaza Library in the evening. My husband, Ben, and I were on our way to pick him up at his hotel on the Plaza when Ben suddenly began to have problems. In the parking lot of a Plaza restaurant, I was frantically calling 911, then Chato Villalobos, an LWC board member who had taken an active part in all of Luis's visit. Chato left his dinner with friends and sped to the Plaza to pick up Luis to take him to the Library.


Luis J. Rodriguez and Chato Villalobos

(I have never yet mastered the art of placing photos in Blogger, so please ignore all photo awkwardnesses.)

















Meanwhile an ambulance showed up for Ben. After oxygen, the stubborn man was feeling better and insisted on sending the ambulance home--against the EMT's and my wishes. I had already arranged for Chato to take my place introducing Luis, so I started to take Ben home. Two blocks away, it hit him again much worse, and this time there was no doubt in my mind that he was having a heart attack. I pulled over and called 911 in a huge panic since his face was turning blue before my eyes, and he could hardly speak. (I must say, in both cases, the ambulances and firetruck got there in seconds! Can't say enough for those guys and gals!) This time I insisted EMERGENCY ROOM. After a very tough night and morning, they found a big blockage in an artery that would normally necessitate cardiac bypass. Due to Ben's youth (not quite 49) and the good shape of his other arteries, however, they put in a special kind of stent. And now nine months later after 3 months of cardiac rehab and the loss of over 30 pounds (on a man who was already thin), Ben is doing extremely well. Well, yes, there's been a complete change in our diet that hasn't been easy, but he's in very good shape. So the story has a very happy ending.

In July, I began a months-long battle with the city over our yard. Perhaps it stemmed from the time of Ben's heart attack when the lawn wasn't cut nor the garden tended for about a month. Oldest son Niles finally came and weed-whacked the back yard, and our dear foster-son Gustavo came (even though he was working and going to school, both full-time, and preparing for the imminent birth of his first child) and mowed the lawn several times when I realized it was a problem. (Had sort of been preoccupied, you know.) We have always had problems with these neighbors who have a hate for nature calling on our prairie garden over the years, but usually I explain to the city inspector and it's all okay. Only this time that wasn't an option. Had to go to court. That meant missing most of Macondo and spending two entire days in Housing Court--a very enlightening experience. As you might suspect, the rich slumlords get their lawyers in there and get themselves off, but as you might not expect, the judges and the city attorney really work with the poorer people and show them a great deal of respect and consideration. Unfortunately, they're hampered by the super restrictive ordinances. At any rate, I survived and kept my garden.

In the midst of this, Ben and I drove down to San Antonio for Macondo since we had committed to doing a seminar on small press publishing there. I was signed up for the week-long workshop and had to back out because of the initial court date. I just hated that since I love the Macondo writing workshop and the Macondo community so much. However, we wanted to keep our commitment to the seminar so we drove down for Friday when it was scheduled and then left to come back Saturday. It was lovely to at least get a little time with the Macondistas who were present, and it was nice for Ben to have a chance to meet them (though he already knew a good number). The seminar went well, and we had a lovely time at the big final pachanga.

Later in the year, Marjorie Agosin, my dear friend, came to Kansas City (see the post prior to this one). Shortly after that, at the annual Thorpe Menn Award luncheon I received the 2010 Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence. And the lovely extra was that my dear friend Nancy Pickard was the keynote speaker and also won a lifetime achievement award. I had a table of women writer friends there to celebrate with me, and it was a delightful time.





Nancy Pickard and me after the Thorpe Menn Award ceremony








This is my wonderful new foster grandson and his mother, Erika Noguera. Erika brought month-old Bequer (more familiarly known as T-Rex) to the Thorpe Menn luncheon with her mother in a lovely gesture of support. Becquer is a beautiful mix of Gustavo and Erika's features and is beginning his life surrounded by poetry and writers. He is a very lucky boy, and he picked a wonderful set of parents.






Right after the Thorpe Menn event, I flew to Chicago for a panel on unrestricted grant-giving at the Grantmakers in the Arts national conference. I was to speak from the artist's viewpoint. Our panel had three directors of national and regional arts funding organizations besides me, and I found it fascinating to listen to them and the heads of all kinds of small to large such organizations in the packed audience. It's always educational to see an issue from an unexpected perspective. I was quite impressed with all of them and the care and good intentions with which they try to balance artists' needs and funders' demands.

That same evening, I joined my pals at Proyecto Latina to give their regular monthly reading. Diana Pando and Irasema Gonzalez head a fabulous team of young women writers who are doing a much-needed job in the local Chicago arts scene. This group of high-energy, large-visioned young Latina artists offer a monthly reading series, periodic other artistic group projects, at one time a radio show, and now a website that's full of life and spice. We had a great audience and lots of fruitful discussion. Love Chicago!

A little while later, Ben and I made a trip to Milwaukee, where he presented at a big academic conference and I gave a reading at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with the ever-wonderful Paul Martinez Pompa. This was set up by Brenda Cardenas, Milwaukee's poet laureate and author of the stunning Boomerang, and the event was sponsored by the Latino Student Union, an impressive group of students. We had a standing-room-only audience, so of course, Ben and I got lost on our way to the university and got there late. Fortunately, Paul had kept them mesmerized. Attending this event was Bonnee Badger Lugauer, a friend of mine from high school that I hadn't seen since our graduation day over forty years ago. What fun!

I've left a lot of other readings and trips and events out of this account. Actually, I've done more professional traveling this year than ever before--even the year I ran back and forth between the Women's Center in Kansas City and the UN. But I don't want this post to run on forever.

Finally, December rolled around. Ben and I celebrated our 18th anniversary. Very special this year since I came so close to losing him earlier. Then I learned that I would receive the ArtsKC Fund's Inspiration Award and would be able to take a research trip in 2011 that I otherwise could not afford. An absolutely lovely way to end the year!

I hope your 2010 was excellent, but with less drama than mine. And I hope 2011 will be a hugely successful and happy year for you and for me.

And a lovely time was had by all.

Marjorie Agosin, my dear friend and wonderful writer and activist, came and went in a whirl of motion and words. She arrived at the airport Monday afternoon, and we sounded like schoolgirls, hugging and squealing with joy at seeing each other again.

I am always surprised when I see Marjorie again, because in my mind, I remember her as taller. She is tiny, in reality, but she's such a larger-than-life mind and presence that my mind plays the trick on me of remembering her as only slightly shorter than I am.

I had cleared everything else off my calendar for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, in order to drive her around and take care of her and enjoy her company. So, in between all the events and interviews on her itinerary, on the city streets and the highway to and from Lawrence, Kansas, we talked and talked. We talked about mutual friends, about Macondo, about teaching, about how necessary it is to be optimistic and have hope if you are to remain an activist in this world, about our children and husbands (we are both extraordinarily lucky there!), about the Midwest, about Chile, about Kansas City and Wellesley as places to live, about politics, about culture and identity, but above all, always and over and over about writing. I am exhausted from all the events and driving, but so energized for all my writing projects. Talking with Marjorie is like plugging into a battery of creativity!

At her first major event, a talk and reading at the downtown branch of the Kansas City Public Library after a reception featuring Chilean sea bass in honor of Marjorie, we had a full house in the stately Helzberg Auditorium, and Marjorie kept the audience mesmerized. Afterward, the Q&A went on and on until I finally had to cut it off to allow time for book signing and a dinner with the Latino Writers Collective and some of our friends and supporters afterward. The diverse audience drew from various neighborhoods of the greater Kansas City metropolitan area with people from the inner city to some from the wealthiest suburbs. Yet they made an emotional community, drawn together by Marjorie's openness and her stories and poetry. They stayed late, talking with Marjorie and each other afterward and making connections they might never have made otherwise.

The next morning was full of interviews, and then we were off to the University of Kansas in Lawrence. First on the schedule was a discussion with graduate students from creative writing and Spanish/Latin American studies. This was a great group of students with incisive questions and discussion. Marjorie was as generous as she always is and connected some with academics who were doing research in their fields of interest. She even advised a young novelist on how to market his manuscript.

After a lovely dinner with some of the department chairs who made her visit to KU possible, we went to the KU Student Union to another stately room for another mesmerizing talk and reading by Marjorie, followed by more curious questions and a book signing. It was stimulating and great, but tiring--and was followed by the hour-long drive back to KC.

On Wednesday, it was so sad to say good-bye at the airport and know it will be months until we see each other at AWP. But what a gift this visit from one of our time's most gifted and remarkable women was--for all of us!


... And then, straight from the airport to Avila University to take part in a Latino Writers Collective reading. But that's a story for tomorrow.

Friday night reading and Saturday workshop--DON'T MISS!

On Friday, September 24 at 7:00 p.m., at The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania, Gary Gildner and Christie Hodgen will read from and sign their newest books. This reading will be excellent—two award-winning writers! Bios below. Join us.

On Saturday, September 25, Gary Gildner will present a workshop for fiction and creative nonfiction/memoir writers focused on using the techniques of narrative to best effect. At $20 for TWP members and $30 for non-members, this is a real bargain. Read the bio and workshop description below, and you’ll see why.

These events are co-sponsored by BkMk Press and The Writers Place and were made possible in part by funding from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.

Gary Gildner is the author of 21 bookS, including The Second Bridge (a novel), Somewhere Geese Are Flying (new and selected stories), The Warsaw Sparks and My Grandfathers Book (memoirs), and Cleaning a Rainbow (his latest collection of poems). He has received The National Magazine Award for Fiction, Pushcart Prizes in fiction and non-fiction, and the Iowa Poetry Prize. His stories and essays have appeared in New Letters, The Georgia Review, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Southern Review, Grand Street, Antaeus, The Paris Review, and in many anthologies and textbooks.

Workshop by Gary Gildner

Saturday, September 25, 10 AM – 12 PM Body and Soul with Gary Gildner. This workshop is devoted to the writing of fiction and nonfiction and how they can enrich each other in the pursuit and practice of good narrative. For fiction writers who want their inventions to sound and feel real, be entertaining, and matter, and for writers of memoirs and essays who wish to organize their work by borrowing story-telling technique, the workshop will look at the major elements of fiction—character, dialog, exposition, plot—and engage in useful exercises. Bring your work in progress. $30 Nonmembers $20 Members

Christie Hodgen is the author of the novels Elegies for the Brokenhearted and Hello, I Must Be Going, both from W.W. Norton & Co. Her collection of short stories, A Jeweler's Eye for Flaw, won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction, and was published by UMASS Press. Her stories have appeared in over a dozen journals and anthologies, and have won two Pushcart Prizes, a grant from the National Endowment for the Art, and the Tobias Woolf Award, among others. She teaches at UMKC.

Honored by the UN and winner of numerous major writing awards, Jewish Chilean activist/writer comes to Kansas City Oct. 4

My dear friend, poet, novelist, memoirist, and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin will speak at the Kansas City Public Library Central Branch, 14 W. 10^th on Monday, October 4^th at 6:30 p.m. (with a reception preceding at 6:00 p.m.)

I’d like to urge you to put this on your calendar and attend. Marjorie is a wonderful, moving speaker. She will be speaking about her life as a writer and activist and as a Jewish Chilean who had to flee Chile as a teenager for life in America.

I’ve listed just a very few of Marjorie’s 30+ published (and many award-winning) books below. She has won awards for poetry, fiction, memoir, and for her scholarly work, which ranges across the fields of women’s studies, Latina literature, Latin American studies, Jewish studies, and human rights. Take a look at Amazon for more (even Amazon doesn’t have all of them).

The Light of Desire: La Luz del Deseo

Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir

Among the Angels of Memory (a book about her grandmother fleeing the Holocaust for Chile)

Alphabet in My Hands: A Writing Life

Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez

Dear Anne Frank ( a stunning poetic dialogue/response to Anne Frank)

Brujas y algo mas: Witches and Other Things

Always From Somewhere Else (memoir of her father)

Toward the Splendid City

Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras

A Cross and A Star (memoir of her mother’s life as a girl in Chile during World War II)

Circles Of Madness: Mothers Of The Plaza De Mayo

Tapestries Of Hope, Threads Of Love (the life of women under the Pinocet dictatorship)

Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir just won the International Latino Book Award for biography. The award committee had this to say about the book: "The Chilean coup d'état of 1973 was a watershed event in the history of Chile. It was also a defining moment in the life of writer Marjorie Agosín. This collection of prose vignettes and free verse draws upon her experiences as a child in Chile, an expatriate abroad, and a minority Jew—even in the land she calls home—to create a striking portrait of a life of exile. The tone of the book varies as it lyrically explores the geography of Chile and weaves into it the themes of exile and oppression. At times the words become hymns to the physical beauty of her country, evoking the grandeur of this land extending to the southernmost tip of the world. At times they are intimate and melancholy, exploring personal and familial history through miniature portraits that reveal the pain of being different. Finally the tone becomes angry as she denounces the injustices committed against her friends and against the families of the disappeared during the seventeen-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Combining themes of memory, childhood, minority issues, Judaism, and political oppression, this collection contains some of Agosín’s strongest work. Of Earth and Sea is a poetic autobiography that explores the world of Chile with eyes that see both despair and hope. "

I’ve posted the Library’s announcement with RSVP link below:

Marjorie Agosín - Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir

Monday, October 4, 2010

6:30pm @ Central Library

RSVP now!

The Chilean coup d'état of 1973 was a watershed event in the history of Chile. It was also a defining moment in the life of writer Marjorie Agosín. In Of Earth and Sea, she draws upon her experiences as a child in Chile, an expatriate abroad, and a minority Jew—even in the land she calls home—to create a striking portrait of a life of exile. Agosín is a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. Her appearance is co-sponsored by the Latino Writers Collective as part of the Library's observance of Hispanic Heritage Month. The book will be available for sale.

Marjorie will also appear at KU on October 5^th at 7:00 p.m. in the Centennial Room of the Kansas Union. This event is co-sponsored by KU’s Departments of English, Spanish and Portuguese, Latin American Studies, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

I hope you’ll take advantage of one of these opportunities to hear and meet one of the remarkable women of our time.

Fear of Nature

I'm just back from Macondo in San Antonio. It was wonderful to see all my friends, even though I wasn't able to take the workshop I'd planned and signed up for with terrific writer, Carla Trujillo--even though we drove two days to get there, spent the day and gave a seminar, then drove two days to get back.

My plans were changed because I don't want to have an unbroken bluegrass front lawn in my front yard. One whole side of it is native plants, herbs and drought-hardy perennials. In the spring and early summer, it's a riot of flowers--daffodils, tulips, Mayapple, yellow bells, Siberian and bearded iris, peonies, gayfeather, roses, sage, peppermint, fennel, rue, lilies, daylilies--but in mid-summer when the heavy heat and burning sun hit, the herbs get leggy and nothing's blooming but the purple coneflowers and Blackeyed Susans. It's at this time of the year that my neighbors, who cut down trees and shrubs and dug up perennial flowerbeds when they first moved next door in order to have nothing but grass and two hanging pots of plastic flowers, call the city on me for "rank weeds over ten inches tall."

The city usually sends me a warning notice. I call and explain that these are not weeds but native plants and herbs. I agree to trim the most unruly (mugwort and lemon balm) back some, and that's usually it. This year there was no warning notice. Just a summons to court with the threat of arrest if I didn't show--and the option to plead "guilty" and send a fine of $125 and cut down my plants. And so the battle was on.

Unfortunately, court landed in the middle of Macondo week, but Ben and I were still able to keep our commitment to give a seminar on small press publishing and book contests there and to see many of my dear Macondo friends. Before Macondo and now afterward, it's hard work outside in terrible heat. 112 degree heat index, anyone? (San Antonio was a blessed relief in that regard, though it was 102 and 103 degrees when we were there. It's much drier than KC and thus the heat is not as oppressive.)

We are turning one long garden bed into four smaller ones plus a patio. (I'll post photos when we're finished.) We are corralling mugwort, tansy, sage, lemon balm, and costmary with tomato and peony cages. We are putting in ticky-tacky fence bed edgings and paver walkways. We are transplanting a rose, three hybrid daylilies, three bright orange Oriental lilies, five Blackeyed Susans, six native daylilies, eight Stargazer lilies, and twenty Siberian iris to the front beds of the garden. All of this is designed to make it more apparent to the eye of passing yard police that this is a garden, not weeds. (Though how anyone could not see it is a garden right now when about twenty naked ladies, otherwise known as surprise lilies--the native American amaryllis--are glowing pinkly right in the middle of it with tall gladiolas with large white and peach bloom spikes beside them is beyond me!)

I am trying to be non-confrontational. I have been gathering information on how much better these plants are than a lawn, and I have been gathering information and trying to get some testimony from yet another city department that has been trying to persuade everyone in my neighborhood to take out lawn and plant rain gardens just like mine. The city has designated my neighborhood as a pilot project called Target Green, and if everyone does as we have done, the city will be spared the million-dollar cost of installing new storm sewers. I'm willing to make cosmetic changes that cost money and effort (neither Ben nor I are in good shape for heavy garden work right now) if that will make it easier for my neighbors and the city to live with my garden. What I am not willing to do is to rip out my plants and put in bluegrass lawn, which is even worse than concrete since it absorbs little stormwater and requires massive water resources and toxic chemicals to thrive in this climate.

I live in the middle of the big city of the metropolitan area, Kansas City, Missouri. Another friend who lives in one of the Kansas-side suburbs just had his city on his neck over sunflowers he had planted in his front yard. Yes, he had to yank out his sunflowers--the state flower of the state of Kansas. I've been reading in this area now as I do research, and I'm finding that cities and towns all over the country are doing amazing things to people for trying to grow native plants. Some have been thrown in jail. Some have had their gardens clearcut by city contractors and then been charged hundreds of dollars for it. It all seems to fall under the heading of "property values." For some reason, people think a neighbor's yard that's not all lawn lowers the value of their property. Many of these people making these complaints are quite conservative, get-government-out-of-our-lives-type people--except when it comes to their neighbors' yards. Then they want government in front and center dictating to those neighbors that they must conform.

I think it's a control issue, of course--and as my sunflower-loving friend says, "These people don't have enough to do in their lives!". But also this is a symptom of our society's fear of nature and the natural world. This fear is a sickness, I believe, since we are a part of the cycle of nature and the natural world, no matter how we want to pretend we're not. In cutting ourselves off from nature, we are cutting ourselves off from our source, our ground.

So, at any rate, that's all the news from here, except for the wonderful bit that my book, Heart's Migration, is one of three finalists for the Thorpe Menn Award.

Now, back to digging in the earth. Which is good for the soul, if not so great for the back and joints. I go back to court on August 13. I'll post the results here.

Catching Up

I'm sorry to have been such a slacker at this blog, but my life took a bit of a detour from normalcy when my husband had a heart attack the evening of Luis Rodriguez's event, April 29. Hospital, 85% blocked artery, discussion whether to do bypass or angioplasty, decision for the latter because of his youth, and recovery--these all sent my life down the rabbit hole for a while.

Ben is still in cardiac rehabilitation, but he's responding very well so far. We feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have celebrated his 49th birthday the other day.

And so, life goes on. I hope to do a better job of posting to the blog now that we're settling into our drastically changed lifestyle and I've pulled back from a bunch of community activities. I've done some reviews of excellent books. As soon as they're out and I can, I'll post some of them here.

Take care, and turn to the people most dear to you and let them know how happy you are that they're in your lives.

Latino Writers Collective Brings Noted Writer and Activist to Kansas City

An Evening with Luis J. Rodriguez

Thursday, April 29, 2010

6:30pm @ Plaza Branch

RSVP now!

The Cuarta Página (Fourth Page) Reading Series will feature renowned writer and activist, Luis J. Rodriguez. Designed to showcase the work of Latino writers and provide role models for local youth, Cuarta Página is coordinated by the Latino Writers Collective.

The series will bring in nationally known poet, memoirist, and fiction writer, Luis J. Rodriguez, at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, April 29, to the Kansas City Library’s Plaza Branch, 4801 Main., for a reception (before the reading at 6:00 p.m.), reading, and book signing. Luis J. Rodriguez is convinced that a writer can change the world. It was through education and the power of words that Rodriguez made his own way out of poverty and despair in the barrio of East LA, breaking free from years of violence as an active gang member. Achieving success as an award-winning Chicano poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more — until his young son joined a gang himself. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in the bestseller Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., a vivid memoir that explores the motivation of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants. Always Running earned a Carl Sandburg Literary Award and was designated a New York Times Notable Book; it has also been named by the American Library Association as one of the nation’s 100 most censored books. The Los Angeles Times Book Review says, “Rodriguez is a relentless truth-teller, an authentic visionary, a man of profound compassion… he never allows us to forget that the rescue of young people is also ‘a spiritual quest.’” He was recently featured on NBC Nightly News as a newsmaker making a difference. (Links to videos below.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ns/nightly_news-latest/#34661781

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ns/nightly_news-latest/#34661936

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/ns/nightly_news-latest/#34661970

Rodriguez is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently My Nature is Hunger: New and Selected Poems 1989-2004 (Curbstone Press). His poetry has won a Poetry Center Book Award and a PEN/Josephine Miles Literary Award, among others. His bilingual books for children, America Is Her Name and It Doesn't Have To Be This Way: A Barrio Story, have won several awards including a Patterson Young Adult Book Award and a Parent’s Choice Book Award. He is also the author of Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times and a novel, Music of the Mill. He has also received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Lannan Fellowship for Poetry, a Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature, a California Arts Council fellowship and several Illinois Arts Council fellowships. He was one of 50 leaders worldwide selected as “Unsung Heroes of Compassion,” presented by the Dalai Lama. Co-founder of Chicago’s Guild Complex, one of the largest literary arts organizations in the Midwest; Rock a Mole (rhymes with guacamole) Productions which produces music and art festivals, CDs and film; Youth Struggling for Survival, a Chicago-based non-profit community group working with gang and non-gang youth, and the small poetry publishing house Tia Chucha Press, part of Tia Chucha's Café & Centro Cultural—a bookstore, coffee shop, art gallery, performance space, and workshop center in Los Angeles, Rodriguez is currently working on a new memoir, titled, A Borrowing of Bones: A Writer's Odyssey through Love, Addictions, Revolution, and Healing due in late 2010/early 2011.

Seating for this event is limited and reservations are required. RSVP now!

The series is co-sponsored by BkMk Press, Guadalupe Centers, Inc., Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City Hispanic News, Kansas Hispanic & Latino American Affairs Commission, Letras Latinas, Mattie Rhodes Latino Cultural Arts Division, Park University, Rockhurst University, and The Writers Place. The series is made possible in part by funding from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.