Join us for a timely discussion with poets Andrés N. Ordorica, Raina J. León, and Xochitl-Julia Bermejo about the intersection of art and social activism.

Andrés N. Ordorica is a queer Latinx poet, writer, and educator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Drawing on his experiences of growing up in a transient immigrant family, he creates worlds filled with characters who are from neither here nor there (ni de aquí, ni de allá). His writing often addresses themes of queerness, liminality, and concepts of belonging. He has published personal essays and creative journalism on the arts, mental health, sexuality, and immigration. At Least This I Know, his debut poetry collection is published with 404 Ink.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia.  She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2006). Her second book, Boogeyman Dawn (2013, Salmon Poetry), was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize (2010).  Salmon Poetry also published sombra : (dis)locate. Her first chapbook, profeta without refuge was a finalist for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses Firecracker award. Her second chabbook, Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self, was published by Alley Cat Books (2019). Her poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work has been published in well over 100 journals and anthologies. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She educates our present and future agitators/educators as a full professor of education, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank at her university.  She is an emerging visual artist and digital archivist.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her debut poetry collection, Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge(Sundress Publications 2016), is inspired by her family’s immigration stories and her time volunteering with the humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. A dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño, can be viewed at latinopia.com. Bermejo was chosen as the first “Poet in the Parks” resident at Gettysburg National Military Park in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and the National Parks Arts Foundation in Fall 2017. Locating the Dead, a chapbook inspired by her time at Gettysburg during the first half of the Trump administration was published by A-B Projects as part of the collaborative art exhibit, “The Stacks.” “Battlegrounds,” a poem from this collection was featured as an Academy of Poets’ Poem-a-Day and on Poetry Unbound. A former Steinbeck fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women grantee, and Tucson Festival of Books 3rd place poetry winner, she was once selected by her mentor, Eloise Klein Healy as a Los Angeles Central Library ALOUD newer poet. She has received residencies with Hedgebrook and the Ragdale Foundation and is a member of the Miresa Collective. Bermejo is co-founder and director of Women Who Submit, a literary organization fighting for gender parity by empowering women and non-binary writers to submit work for publication. She received a BA in Theatre Arts from California State University of Long Beach and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She teaches adult writing workshops with UCLA Extension and children’s poetry workshops throughout LA County.

For Andrés N. Ordorica, purchase direct from publisher here.

Andrés N. Ordorica, © Daniel McGowan Photography; Raina J. León, © Matteo Monchiero; Xochtil-Julisa Bermejo, © Andre Black

Poetics of Resistance