liz gonzález is the author of the historical creative nonfiction chapbook The Original OLG: San Bernardino’s First Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, forthcoming from Los Nietos Press; the multi-genre book Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds: Poems y Cuentos New and Selected (Los Nietos Press, 2018); and the poetry collection Beneath Bone (Manifest Press, 2000). Her creative nonfiction and poetry appear in various journals and anthologies, including Air/Light, Poets & Writers Magazine, San Bernardino Singing, The International Literary Quarterly, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. gonzález’s honors include the Arts Council for Long Beach Incite / Insight Award for her community work in North Long Beach through Uptown Word & Arts, a literary and arts series she co-founded with her spouse; an Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship; an Elizabeth George Foundation Artistic Grant; and an Irvine Fellowship at the Lucas Artists Residency Program. In 2016, she founded Women's Write Inn, a rotating group of women poets and writers that meet regularly to write alone together and support each other. She teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. A fourth-generation Californian, gonzález lives in Long Beach.

Richard Vargas was born and raised in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, California. He earned a BA at California State University, Long Beach, where he studied under American poets Gerald Locklin and Richard Lee, and earned an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Vargas edited and/or published five issues of The Tequila Review (1977-1980) and twelve issues of The Mas Tequila Review (2010-2015). A recipient of the 2011 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference’s Hispanic Writer Award, he was on the faculty of the 2012 10th National Latino Writers Conference and of the 2015 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. Vargas is the author of five collections of poetry: McLife (Main Street Rag, 2005), American Jesus: Poems (Tia Chucha Press, 2007), Guernica, revisited (Press 53, 2014), How A Civilization Begins (Mouthfeel Press, 2022), and Leaving A Tip At The Blue Moon Motel (Casa Urraca Press, forthcoming in 2023). He currently resides in Wisconsin, near the lake where Otis Redding’s plane crashed.

Amanda Calderón is a third-year MDiv (2023) student at Princeton Theological Seminary and a student aide at the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI). Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Education from Temple University. Calderón has a heart for God, a passion for people, and an outstretched hand to those in the margins, specifically in education and in the Latinx community, to bring truth and light to those who have been crushed by the power of darkness.

Emanuel Padilla is president of World Outspoken, a ministry preparing the mestizo church for cultural change. After years as an undergraduate instructor, he now develops accessible resources and training for bi-cultural Christians facing questions of identity, culture, and theology. Emanuel is completing a PhD in Theological and Ethical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He also serves at The Brook, a church on the northwest side of Chicago, along with his wife Kelly. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter for more on his research into theology and culture.

José A. Pérez is a poet, actor, and foster-care reform/abolitionist advocate. A native New Yorker, he grew up in Queens as a systems-impacted person in foster homes, group homes, and other juvenile institutions. For Pérez, the arts have been synonymous with freedom, fostering spaces where relationships are forged under the common love for lyrics and unfettered expression. He especially found writing poetry and acting on stage to be his catalysts not only to survive in those institutions but also to thrive. While incarcerated, Pérez earned an AA from Bard College, a BS from Nyack College through HudsonLink, and capped his academic career with an MPS from the New York Theological Seminary. He has facilitated theater and poetry workshops, including the Harvest Moon Poetry Collective with Beat poet Janine Pommy Vega, and hosted poets like Naomi Shihab Nye and Amiri Baraka. As an actor, Pérez recently performed at the Bushwick Starr Theater in Quince (One Whale’s Tale Productions, 2022). He has also been a servant leader as an alternatives-to-violence facilitator, including work with gang-involved youth at the Center for Alternatives Sentencing and Employment Services as a community Benefits Project Supervisor. Currently, Pérez is Project Manager of YouthNPower: Transforming Care for the Children’s Defense Fund.

Dr. Jennifer A. Baez, Assistant Professor of Art History in the School of Art + Art History + Design at University of Washington, specializes in the visual, material, and religious culture of Latin America and the African diaspora under the global Spanish empire. She received her PhD in art history from Florida State University, where she taught courses in museum studies and the history of African art. She also holds and MA in Art History from University of Arizona; and MA in Translation and Interpretation from Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a BFA in Painting and Printmaking (with a minor in Romance Languages) from SUNY Purchase College. Her current book project on the miraculous icon of the Virgin of Altagracia in colonial Hispaniola is a microhistory exploring intersections between Marian devotion, artistic practice, race, and the formation of Spanish Creole origin stories. She is also interested in contemporary Caribbean and Latinx art, and writes on monuments, heritage, and issues of gender, race, and representation.

Her work has appeared in several journals and academic platforms, including Hyperallergic, Small Axe, Arts, Smarthistory, and in the Art & Architecture ePortal of Yale University Press (forthcoming). Several grants and fellowships have supported her research, including a Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation award. She was also selected to participate in the 6th annual Curatorial Foundation Seminar hosted by the Mellon Foundation and the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York City. Dr. Baez is currently working on an exhibition on salt and cross-cultural artistic exchange in the Black Mediterranean. Professional affiliations: College Art Association (CAA), Association of Latin American Art (ALAA), Renaissance Society of America (RSA), and the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) section for Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Dr. Valentina Napolitano is Professor of Anthropology and Connaught Scholar at the University of Toronto. Her work engages with anthropological, political theological and critical theory debates about personhood, migration, traces, borderlands, and the religious. Among other work, she is the author of two monographs—Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church (Fordham University Press, 2015) and Migration, Mujercitas and Medicine Man: Living in Urban Mexico (University of California Press, 2002)—and different edited collections and articles. She is the recipient of the Connaught Global Challenge Award for the project Entangled Worlds: Sovereignty, Sanctities and Soil (with Prof. Simon Coleman), a tri-campus University of Toronto Initiative, and she herself navigates different threads of life through the soil and histories of the Americas, the trans- Mediterranean and West Africa.

Dr. Kristin Norget is Associate Professor of Anthropology at McGill University. Her current research interests are concerned with mediatization and contemporary strategies of evangelization of the Roman Catholic Church focused on Mexico and Peru. She has also published on issues of indigeneity and Catholic liberation theology in Mexico. In addition, building on a long-standing interest in transcultural psychiatry, Dr. Norget, who holds a PhD from Cambridge University, completed an MA program in counseling psychology in 2017. She co-edited Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (Bloomsbury Press, 2022) with Eric Hoenes and Marc Loustau; The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017) with Valentina Napolitano and Maya Mayblin; and is the author of Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca (Columbia University Press, 2006).

Writer and activist Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, is a Cultural Accelerator. He was the first Chicano to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. In 1998, he founded Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say (NP), Houston’s first reading series for Latino authors. The group galvanized Houston’s Community Cultural Capital to become a movement for civil rights, education, and representation. When Arizona officials banned Mexican American Studies, Diaz and four veteran members of NP organized the 2012 Librotraficante Caravan to smuggle books from the banned curriculum back into Arizona. He is the author of The Aztec Love God (Fiction Collective 2, 1998) and The Tip of the Pyramid: Cultivating Community Cultural Capital (University of New Orleans Press, 2022) is the first book in his series on Community Organizing.

Gus Clemens is a freelance writer and wine columnist. His “On Wine” column appears weekly in the San Angelo Standard-Times, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Abilene Reporter-News, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, with national distribution to Gannett/USA Today newspapers and websites nationwide. Clemens has also written, collaborated on, edited, or produced over 15 books.

Victor Hugo Mancilla is a native of Mexico City with extensive experience as a journalist, publisher, screenwriter, director, and associate producer. He is the founder and director/producer of Eravision Films, a production and film-research organization. For over 12 years, Eravision has worked in the field on special assignments in Mexico, the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and The Philippines. Eravision has provided services to cultural and historical projects by HBO, Green Moon Productions, International Films, Latino Smithsonian, Transcended, Mosaico, Basic E. Inc, Travel and Space Museum and Project Uplift. In addition to numerous commercial industrial films, Mancilla has served as director and/or producer of: The Forgotten Eagles (201 Productions); Noche de muertos (Eravision); Children’s Court (Lavine Productions); Our Neighborhood (A/P, Kidworks, Transcendental Media); Living with Autism and Deafness (The Willie Rose Foundation); The Catch; Buena Vista Social Rock (Eravision); and the award-winning documentary Art and Revolutions. The Forgotten Eagles, narrated by award-winning actor Edward James Olmos, tells the story of Mexico’s famed WWII 201 Squadron and was selected by the Smithsonian Institute for Best Historical Documentary in 2009. Mancilla’s works in progress include: the feature film The Lost Bullet (Ensuenos Entertainment); The Legend of the Volcanos, An Eagle Tribute Productions; An American Spy, the story of WWII spy Claire Phillips; the children’s video “Let’s Play” (Eravision); and Growing Dreams: Successes in Mexican-American Wineries. Among the many other notable artists Mancilla has worked with are Anthony Hopkins and Kelly Ho. Mancilla has two books in progress, several screenplays, and newspaper and magazine articles on Latino issues.

Elyssa Salinas-Lazarski is a doctoral student in theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on theology of the body and sex, integrating her Lutheran faith, and her experience as a Mexican-American and as a woman. Salinas-Lazarski is a graduate of Valparaiso University, where she studied theatre, and holds a Master of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Alongside her studies, she is a teaching assistant, poet, and hobby baker. She has been writing poetry since age seven and continues to dabble in the art form in the midst of reading, writing, and teaching. Salinas-Lazarski's poetry and blog posts can be found at Bold Café; The Mudroom; Naked and Unashamed; and We Talk, We Listen. She lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, and two cats.

Abel Alvarado is a playwright, book writer/lyricist, costume designer, community programs manager, and producing artistic director at Teatro Nuevos Horizontes/New Horizons Theatre Company (TNH Productions). He conceived and wrote ARENA: A House Music-al. An award-winning costume designer, he has worked on many productions, including In The Heights; It Happened in Roswell; A Force To Be Reckoned With; An L.A. Journey; Little Red, Drunk Girl; Remembering Boyle Heights; Bad for the Community; Teatro MOZ; Mariela In The Desert, They Shoot Mexicans, Don't They?; Vietgone; Enemy of the Pueblo; Evangeline, The Queen of the Make-Believe; and Disney's Aladdin: Dual Language Edition. Alvarado’s video work includes: Wardrobe Stylist for Grammy Award nominee Gerardo Ortiz’s music video “Para qué lastimarme?" and for the web series Café Con Chisme. In 2019, he was awarded "Best Costume Design" by the NAACP Theater Awards for his costumes in Disney's Beauty and the Beast - The Broadway Musical at CASA 0101. Producing the Brown and Out IV & V Theater Festival and designing for Josefina Lopez's Real Women Have Curves at the Pasadena Playhouse are personal highlights of Alvarado’s work. Alvarado’s community work includes being a Research Assistant for Spectrum Community Services at Charles Drew University, Voter Registration Manager with Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, and Health Education Specialist with The Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Sammie Seamon is a senior at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, double-majoring in English and Spanish, with a focus in creative writing. She hopes to pursue bilingual journalism after graduation and wants to be of service to Spanish-speaking communities. She is particularly interested in the histories of her own family, which originates in Tepoxtepec, Guerrero, México, and is currently embarking on a short-story collection about life within the pueblo. As a half-white Texan latina growing up on the U.S. side of the border, she strives to reflect on her own identity and reconcile her experiences with family across borders through writing.

Gabriel García Román is a multi-disciplinary artist and craftsman who examines and decodes the politics of identity through intricate and process-based work. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico and raised in Chicago’s northwest side, García Román received his BA from The City College of New York, where he studied Studio Art, and currently resides in New York City.

His art has been acquired by the International Center of Photography and has been shown at the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA), Galería de la Raza (San Francisco, CA), Cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York, NY), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), and numerous other institutions and galleries. García Román was a 2018 recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture’s artist grant. In 2019, he was commissioned by the Leslie-Lohman Museum to bring his Queer Icons series into the streets, where 100 Queer Icons flags were marched down the World Pride route, for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In 2020, Garcia Roman was one of 10 artists in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for Workspace, their flagship residency program.

Cleyvis Natera was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City. She holds a BA from Skidmore College and an MFA from New York University. Natera is the author of the novel Neruda on the Park (Ballantine Books, 2022), and her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration, TIME, Gagosian Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix), and Kweli Journal, among other publications. She has received honors from PEN America, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). Natera teaches creative writing to undergraduate students at Fordham University and to graduate students at the Writer’s Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York. She lives with her husband and two young children in Montclair, New Jersey.

The career of José Esquivel has spanned over 50 years in the graphic and fine arts in San Antonio, Texas. The Chicano socio-political movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a major influence on his early work and provided a direction that continues to this day. In 1968, Esquivel co-founded El Grupo in San Antonio, Texas. One of the earliest Chicano collectives in the country, El Grupo evolved into Con Safo in 1971. Esquivel’s work has been included in national and international exhibitions. 

Danny R. Peralta was born in The Bronx in 1978 and raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan. After earning a BSA in Social Studies Education from New York University, he began his work as a youth educator and community developer. While searching to expand upon his love for art and storytelling, he formally began attending black-and-white photography workshops at ICP @ THE POINT in the South Bronx and was awarded the first ever Jocelyn Benzakin Fellowship for documentary photography. He went on to earn an MFA from the International Center of Photography (ICP-Bard). With his camera focused on immediate family and community, he completed projects like Ma (winner of a 2007 BRIO Award), LOVE LIVES (a call for trauma relief in Hunts Point), and ‘Bout that Life (featured in BX200’s Bronx Now exhibit). In 2008, he returned to THE POINT CDC as Director of Arts and Education, and in 2015 became Executive Managing Director. He co-founded Peasant Podium Music in 2009, curating live musical showcases and visual art experiences for local and international artists, and was a 2019 En Foco Photography Fellow. Peralta currently lives in the Pelham Parkway section of The Bronx with his wife and two sons, who inspire his every endeavor.

John Olivares Espinoza is the author of the poetry collection The Date Fruit Elegies (Bilingual Press Review, 2008), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. His other honors include a grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a residency at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and several Pushcart Prize nominations. His poetry has been translated into Spanish and published in Spain and Latin America. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and children.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos García is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, he conveys “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience, and writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. García is the author of three collections of poetry: Melancolía: Poems (Červená Barva Press, 2016), black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018), and [Elegies] (Flower Song Press, 2020). His poems and prose appear in various publications, including POETRY Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, and Lunch Ticket. He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books Publishing, A NonProfit Corp. A native New Yorker, García holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.