Join us for the unveiling of the 25th-anniversary print commissioned for the celebration by Maceo Montoya, a commemoration poem by Brenda Cárdenas, and mingle in Galería América.
RSVP is required for this event (registration is closed).
Maceo Montoya is a California-based author, artist, and educator who has published books in a variety of genres. His first novel, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Review, 2010), was awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for "Best First Book" and Latino Stories named him one of its "Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch." In 2014, University of New Mexico Press published his second novel, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, and Copilot Press published Letters to the Poet from His Brother, a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays. Montoya’s third work of fiction, You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 2015) was a finalist for Foreword Review's INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award. Montoya is also the author and illustrator of Chicano Movement for Beginners, a work of graphic nonfiction. His most recent novel is Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces (University of Nevada Press, 2021).
In the visual arts, Montoya's paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in exhibitions and publications throughout the country as well as internationally. He has collaborated with other writers on visual-textual projects, including David Montejano's Sancho's Journal (University of Texas Press, 2012), an ethnography of the Brown Berets in San Antonio, Laurie Ann Guerrero's A Crown for Gumecindo (Aztlán Libre Press, 2015), and Arturo Mantecon's translation of Mexican poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro's Poetry Comes Out of My Mouth (Dialogos Books, 2018). In 2021, Red Hen Press published American Quasar, a collaboration with Fresno poet David Campos featuring 19 of Montoya's monoprints.
Montoya grew up in Elmira, California. He comes from a family of artists, including his father Malaquias Montoya, a renowned artist, activist, and educator, and his late brother, the poet Andrés Montoya. Maceo graduated from Yale University in 2002 and received his Master of Fine Arts in visual art from Columbia University in 2006. He is a professor at UC Davis in Chicana/o Studies, where he teaches courses on Chicanx culture and literature and the English department's MFA Creative Writing Program. Since 2022, he has served as the editor of the literary magazine Huizache.
Brenda Cárdenas is the author of Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023), winner of the 2023 Society
of Midland Authors Poetry Award and silver winner of the 2023 Foreword Review Indie Poetry Award; Boomerang (Bilingual Press, 2009); and the chapbooks Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors with Roberto Harrison, Achiote Seeds/Semillas de Achiote with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, and Gabriela Erandi Rico; and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone. She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017) and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press, 2001), which won the Chicago Women in Publishing first place award for excellence in editing. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in an array of anthologies and journals, including POETRY; Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology; Latinx Poetics: The Art of Poetry; Braving the Body; Prairie Schooner; SWIMM Everyday; Good River Review; TAB: Journal of Poetry and Poetics; Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing; Court Green; Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Anthology; The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry; Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems; and many others.
Cárdenas has enjoyed collaborating on inter-arts projects with musicians, visual artists, and choreographers. Composer Daniel Afonso (California State University) recently wrote choral music to her "Poema para los Tin-Tun-Teros," and the score was published in 2023 by Hal Leonard, the largest U.S. music publisher (Listen here). It was also performed in 2024 at New York's Carnegie Hall. Cárdenas and artist Cynthia Lollis contributed to Mind the Gap, an ekphrastic portfolio of print/poem exchanges edited by Tim Abel and Sara Parr in 2013. In 2009, Kyle Jenkins created a film animation of Cárdenas’ poem “Song” for Poetry Everywhere sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, and in 2008, Kelly Anderson choreographed a dance to her poem “Sonnet for Thunder Lovers and Primary Colors” for Dance Works Performance Company’s The Bra Project. In 2001, with the band Sonido Ink(quieto), Cárdenas recorded the spoken word and music CD Chicano, Illnoize: The Blue Island Sessions.