Vroman’s Bookstore is proud to have co-organized this event with Lisbeth Coiman.

#DignidadLiteraria is a network of committed Latinx activists hosting town halls and other events across the nation to combat the dearth of Latinx authors, editors and executives in the US publishing industry.

Féi Hernandez (FAY)
Pronouns: they/them
Féi Hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, México) is an Inglewood-raised immigrant trans non-binary visual artist, writer, and healer. Currently, they are the President of the Advisory Board for Gender Justice Los Angeles. They have been published in Poetry, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier, NPR’s Code Switch, BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT, PANK Magazine amongst others. féi is the author of Hood Criatura (Sundress Publications, 2020). féi collects Pokémon plushies.

Marcus Clayton (Mar-kuhs Clay-tuhn)
Pronouns: he/him/his
Marcus Clayton is a multigenre Afro-Latino writer from South Gate, CA, holds an M.F.A. from CSU Long Beach, and is pursuing a Literature & Creative Writing PhD at the University of Southern California. He is an executive editor for Indicia Literary Journal, and plays in a punk band called tudors.

Twitter: @marcussomething
Instagram: @marcussomethingsomething
Website: marcus-clayton.com

Angela M. Sánchez
Pronouns: she, her, hers / ella (in Spanish)
Her first can be pronounced in English or Spanish. She responds to both and whichever is easier for you/another speaker to say is fine. :) 
Her last name is pronounced SAHN-ches. 
Angela M. Sánchez is a Los Angeles native and 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow. She has written and illustrated a picture book, Scruffy and the Egg, about family homelessness and is working on a YA urban-fantasy novel. Angela has written for SOLRAD, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and LAist.

Viva Padilla
Viva Padilla is a bilingual poet, writer, editor, and publisher born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. She’s the founding editor in chief of Dryland, an independent print literary journal established in 2015, and Hombre Lobo, an intergenerational book series documenting paranormal/ supernatural stories experienced by Xicanx. Padilla is a first-generation Chicana, a daughter of immigrants who crossed the border from Colima, Mexico. She also runs FUTURE NOW, a virtual Black and Brown reading and open mic series.

She’s been an invited speaker at universities like CSU Dominguez Hills, CSU Fullerton, and international cultural institutions like Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba. Viva’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in the L.A. Times, The Acentos Review, PANK, wearemitú, SAND, Exposition Review, The Autry Museum, and L.A. Forum for Archictecture and Urban Design and others. She currently works at Tia Chucha Press and lives on the Eastside in Los Angeles.

Lisbeth Coiman 
Is a bilingual writer, educator, cultural worker, and rezandera from Venezuela. She is the author of a bilingual poetry collection, Uprising / Alzamiento, dedicated to the liberation of Venezuela and which will be released in June 2021 by Finishing Line Press. Her debut book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir, independently published in 2017, explores the intersection between immigration and mental health. She lives in Los Angeles where she teaches adult English as a Second Language.  She is an active member of Women Who Submit and the Community Literature Initiative (CLI).

#DignidadLiteraria: Our Voices