A Son of Cuba: Agustin D. Martinez

Agustin D. Martinez was born in Panama after his family fled post-revolutionary Cuba in the spring of 1960. The family eventually found their way to Miami where Martinez grew up in a bilingual household. Over the years, Martinez paid close attention to the stories his parents and relatives told about life in Cuba before and after Fidel Castro took power. Later, as a young teacher in a mostly Cuban-American section of Miami, he learned about the lives and struggles of his students who’d lived in Cuba in the 1990s, a time of extreme hardship after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Jennifer Givhan on Writing

I met Jennifer Givhan last May at the 10th Annual National Latino Writer’s Conference where we were both participants. During the student readings, she stood out. She had such presence, standing on stage and sharing her compelling poems about womanhood and mothering.

Givhan, still in her twenties, has had an active writing career. She was a 2010 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, a St. Lawrence Book Award finalist, and a Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Prize finalist for her poetry collection Red Sun Mother. Nominated for the 2012 Best of the Net, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over fifty journals, including Prairie Schooner, Contrary, Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, decomP, Pedestal, Fickle Muses, Up the Staircase, Acentos Review, and Crab Creek Review. She attends the MFA program in Poetry at Warren Wilson College with a fellowship, teaches composition at Western New Mexico University, and is at work on her second novel and poetry collection.

Here she discusses her life as a working writer:

An Artist’s Call to Action: Plane Wreck at Los Gatos

On January 28, 1948, an INS deportation plane crashed near Los Gatos Canyon in Fresno County, California. The victims of the accident included several “Mexican nationals” who lived and worked in the United States. The media referred to the passengers as deportees, never naming them individually. After the wreckage was recovered, the victims were buried in a mass grave marked by a small placard that read “28 Mexican Nationals who died in a plane crash are buried here.” Outraged by the media coverage, Woody Guthrie penned a poem entitled (Deportee) Plane Wreck at Los Gatos about the victims. A few years later, a musician named Martin Hoffman set Guthrie’s words to music.

Three Winning Entries That Didn’t Win NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction Contest

So, if you don’t already know, National Public Radio (NPR) has been holding a contest series called “Three-Minute Fiction.” Each round, contestants submit a piece that is no more than six hundred words (i.e. something that can be read in three minutes or so). A guest judge determines the theme and names a winner at the end of each round.

A New Journal, My First Published Story

Like so many aspiring writers, I’ve been busy submitting work to journals, both online and print. I’ve had some luck in the poetry department, but it took a little while to find a home for my short story, Aftermath. After receiving several rejections, I began to think the story was deeply flawed. But then the excellent editors at the new Red Savina Review saw the story’s potential. The founding editor, John Gist, accepted the piece contingent upon one last tweak of a few scenes. So, I went to work. Again.

Writing and Sketching

Once, I drew a bowl. It was perfectly round and otherwise unremarkable. Just an ordinary cereal or soup bowl.

I drew this ordinary bowl for my then-boyfriend who was an artist, perhaps hoping he’d see how cosmically connected we were, you know, because I could do something he could do.

Dan Vera On Poetry and Speaking Wiri Wiri

Dan Vera is a Washington, D.C.-based poet, editor, and literary historian.

A well-known writer in D.C. literary circles, Dan also contributes his time, energy, and talent to raising cultural and political awareness through poetry. Among his many projects are the literary history site, DC Writers’ Homes, and his work on the board of Split This Rock Poetry.

He has published work in several literary journals and his first book of poetry is entitled The Space Between Our Danger and Delight. Red Hen Press recently awarded him the 2013 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize* for his second poetry collection, Speaking Wiri Wiri.