Sergio G. Barrera is a native of the Rio Grande Valley and alumnus of MAS at UTPA/UTRGV. He is a current Doctoral Candidate in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan where his works finds that men of color in homosocial spaces use brotherhood and performance as methods that intervene with heteropatriarchal structures that influence men to behave in hypermasculine tendencies. In addition, Barrera values community formations, inclusive spaces, emotional well-being, and expressive freedoms in scholarship, teaching, and practice. He has published essays in Rio Bravo: Journal of the Borderlands and El Mundo Zurdo. He also is a recipient of the 2017 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Frederick A. Cervantes award for best essay by a graduate student.

Dr. Norma E. Cantú, a daughter of the borderlands, is the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She is the founder and director of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa, and organized El Mundo Zurdo, a gathering of Anzalduistas from 2007–2019. Her most recent publications include two anthologies: Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Pedagogies and Practices for our Classrooms and our Communities, Mexicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction, and Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art; Cabañuelas, a novel; and Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor. She serves on the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center Conjunto de Nepantleras and the boards of the Macondo Writers Workshop and the American Folklore Society as Past President. An activist scholar, poet, writer, and folklorist she has published widely in the field of Chicane Studies and Border Studies.

Ari Chagoya is a 21st century queer, Indigenous Curandera, Mera Nepantlera, Doula/Childbirth Compañera, Writer, Poet, Artist, and Godmother.

Sheila Contreras is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University. She directed MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program from 2008-2015. From 2015-2017, she served as Associate Dean in the areas of Curriculum, Diversity and Inclusion, in the College of Arts & Letters at MSU. Her research and teaching interests include Chicanx and U.S. Latinx literature, multi-ethnic literatures, comparative indigeneities, and women's studies. Her first book, Blood Lines: Myth, Indigenism and Chicana/o Literature (Texas, 2008) examined the archaeology of literary indigenism in Mexican American creative and political writing. Her current research moves in two directions: one explores the relationship between Mexican-Americans and land through comparatist settler-colonialist contexts, and the other examines Latinx student success in higher education, some of which has been published in Sociology of Race & Ethnicity (2018). She has essays in Keywords in Latina and Latino Studies (NYU 2017) and Teaching Chicana and Mexicana Literatures (MLA 2020). A first-generation college student, Contreras began her journey to the PhD in the community college system of South Texas.

César L. de León is the author of speaking with grackles by soapberry trees (FlowerSong 2021), which recieved the 2022 John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. He is a poet-organizer for Poets Against Walls and his poetry has been published in various anthologies and journals such as Along the River 2: More Voices From the Rio Grande and Juventud!: Growing up on the Border among other anthologies and journals. De León is a Golden Circle Award recipient from The University of Columbia Press and he holds an MFA in creative writing with a certificate in Mexican American Studies from The University of Texas Río Grande Valley.

Celeste De Luna is an artist/printmaker from the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. Rooted in a Chicana feminist perspective, she seeks to tease out the intricacies of living in and along the borderlands in her art as well as a narrative world builder who envisions the past, present, and futuristic frontera. De Luna is a self-taught printmaker whose work includes large-scale woodcut prints and fabric installation. She is a co-founder of the socially engaged art collective Las Imaginistas, an accomplished home cook, and cultural advocate. Her recipes appear in the book “Don’t Count the Tortillas” by Adan Medrano and she also appears in his film Truly Texas Mexican advocating for traditional food, street vendors, and cultural lifeways. Currently, she lives in San Antonio, works out of her home studio, Metzli Press, and teaches Mexican-American Studies and Art for Northwest Vista College. “A true daughter of the borderlands, her art celebrates the quotidian and the exceptional on the border,” writes Inés Hernández-Ávila.

La Otra Taller Nepantla

Anel I. Flores’ craft manifests as graphic memoir, poetry, fiction, silver, and paintings, as a continuation and evolution of the conversations started by the Xicana/e/x movement in art and literature, now infused by latina/e/x, transfeminism, intersectionality, queer politics and resistencia. Her work combines, oscillates between, and blurs these different disciplines in an ultimate goal to provide ancestral healing, present day joy, and a re-centering of Womyn of Color, Latina/e/x, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Womyn, Femmes and Gender Non-Binary folx. She is founder and director of La Otra Taller Nepantla Residency and an MFA in Creative Writing.Her awards include Catalyst for Change, Best Local Poet, Women’s Advocate of the Year, the Nebrija Creadores Award, Best Of SA Author, Chingona in Literature Award, Ancinas Award at Squaw Valley, NALAC Fund for the Arts Award, Accion Women Inspiring Women & others. She is co-editor of forthcoming Jota Anthology and author of Lambda award nominated book Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas.

TEDx Speaker and Pushcart Prize nominee Daniel García Ordaz, a.k.a. The Poet Mariachi, is a teacher at La Joya Early College and South Texas College. García appears in "ALTAR: Cruzando fronteras/Building bridges,” an homage to our Gloria. He is a co-founder of the Gloria Anzaldúa Legacy Project as well as the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival. García’s writing appears in Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican In America (2021), I SING: THE BODY (Poems About Body Image) (2021), Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century (2020), Poetry of Resistance: Voices For Social Justice (2016), and Juventud! Growing up on the Border: Stories and Poems (2013). His books include You Know What I'm Sayin'? (2006) and Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Songs of Empowerment (2018.) García earned an MFA in Creative Writing from UTRGV. He is a songwriter, former journalist, a Navy veteran. He will serve as 2023 McAllen Poet Laureate.

Erika Garza grew up in Elsa, Texas, and has been reading and performing her poetry in the Río Grande Valley since 2001. Garza received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas Pan American. A writing instructor at South Texas College, she lives in McAllen. She has served as the poetry editor for New Border Voices: An Anthology (Texas A&M University Press, 2014) and ¡Juventud! Growing Up on the Border (VAO Publishing, 2013). Additionally, her poetry has been featured online in La Bloga, Con Tinta, and Poets Against SB 1070. Her work has also appeared in Texas Observer and Border Senses. She is author of the poetry collection Unwoven, published by Flower Song Press.

A native of the El Paso/Juárez border, Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a Chicana writer/scholar/activist who uses prose, poetry, and theory for social change. With a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico, Alicia is a Professor of Chicana/o Studies, English, and Gender Studies at UCLA, where she has taught since 1994, when she was hired as a founding faculty member of the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. She served as Chair of Chicana/o Studies from 2007-2010, and from 2013-2019, she Chaired of the LGBTQ Studies Program. She teaches courses in Chicana lesbian/feminist literature and theory, border studies, barrio popular culture, and bilingual creative writing. Her research focuses on persecuted women across time and culture, particularly those who have been labeled “bad women” because they defy the sex and gender dictates that patriarchy enforces on the female body. Alicia has published 12 books, among them, award-winning novels, poetry and short story collections, anthologies, and single-authored academic texts. She has won a number of awards for both her fiction and her academic works. With her wife, Alma Lopez, she is currently working on an illustrated biography of Gloria Anzaldúa. For more about Alicia and her publications, check out https://aliciagaspardealba.net.

Professor Hernández-Avila is Niimiipuu/Nez Perce, enrolled on the Colville Reservation, Washington, on her mother's side, and Tejana on her father's side. A scholar, poet, and visual artist, her research and teaching focus on contemporary Indigenous literature and religious traditions of the Americas. She is one of the six founders of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In April 2017, she received the Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award from the Latino Studies section of the Latin American Studies Association. In August 2017, she received a Community Award from the Organización de Organizaciones, Chiapas, Mexico, for her work as an ally to the cultural and linguistic revitalization movements of Mayan peoples in Chiapas. She is a member of Luk'upsíimey/The North Star Collective, a Niimiipuu/Nez Perce creative writers’ group. She was an activist in the Movimiento in Tejas--she became friends with Gloria in the mid-1970s and considers her a sacred muse.

Dr. Hey-Colón is Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Temple University. She specializes in Afro-Latinx and Latinx Studies, Caribbean Studies, Border Studies, and Afro-Diasporic Spirituality. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she earned her bachelor's degree from Haverford College and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. Her current book project, Channeling Knowledges: Afro-Diasporic Waters in Latinx and Caribbean Worlds, centers the multi-directional flows of water, migration, gender, race, and spirituality in contemporary Latinx and Caribbean cultural production. Hey-Colón’s work is forthcoming in Aztlán, and can be found in Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, Latino Studies, and Small Axe, among others. In 2018, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, and in 2017-2018 she was the Carlos E. Castañeda Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS).

Hinojosa holds a Master of Science, College Student Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Aaron is the Program Coordinator for the Center for Diversity & Inclusion and DREAM Resource Center and has been at UTRGV since August 2017. He has developed and oversees the DREAM Zone Advocate Training which aims to educate the UTRGV community on the realities of DACA/undocumented students and provide support. He has also developed the LEAP Diversity & Inclusion Workshop which is an interactive and educational workshop regarding identity, privilege, language, allyship, and other important social justice elements. Aaron also manages the Ally Safe Zone Training which helps educate the members of the community about LGBTQ+ realities and provides resources for support. Aaron also continues to develop programming efforts that are innovative and interactive with diversity and inclusivity in mind either through collaborations (on and off-campus) or through new projects (like the Community Connections, People Series, or Healing Circles).

Ana-Maurine Lara is a national award-winning novelist, poet, and scholar. She is the author of Erzulie’s Skirt, Kohnjehr Woman, and When the Sun Once Again Sang to the People. Her academic books include Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty and Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic. Lara’s work focuses on questions of Black and Indigenous freedom.

Amalia Ortiz was awarded the 2020 American Book Award for Oral Literature and appeared on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO. NBC Latino named her book of poetry, Rant. Chant. Chisme. one of “10 Great Latino Books of 2015,” It was also awarded the 2015 Writers' League of Texas Poetry Discovery Prize. She was chosen to speak at TEDx McAllen 2015. She was awarded the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Grant, a writing residency at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and the 2018 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant to film videos for her latest book The Canción Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs. She won a 2021 City of San Antonio Individual Artist Grant to create poetry inspired by women in punk. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and a Hedgebrook writer-in-residence alumna. Amalia received her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

University of Texas Río Grande Valley

Rosalva Resendiz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice. Her work engages Critical Chicana Feminism with a focus on “intersectionality” and identity politics, considering colonialism, decolonialism and postcolonialism. Her activism and research intersects Border Studies/Chicana Feminism/Social Justice/Critical Criminology. She is researching and has published on Corridos and Soldaderas as well as indigenous resistance and injustice on the border.

Noreen Rivera is associate professor of literature and cultural studies at UTRGV and coordinator of the UTRGV Voces of a Pandemic Oral History Project, a public facing digital archive, partnered with the University of Texas at Austin Voces Oral History Center, that preserves stories of Latinx communities affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Her research studies nineteenth and twentieth-century Mexican American cultural producers, via interdisciplinary frameworks, across regional, national, transborder, and global geographies. She is currently working on a critical edition titled The Far East Journals and Other Cold War Era Writings of Américo Paredes, which recovers Américo Paredes’s life writing in the context of the global Cold War. Her essays appear in Aztlán, the Journal of South Texas, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, Chicana/Latina Studies, and Oxford Bibliographies. Her poetry appears in Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border.

Jose Antonio Rodríguez’s books include the poetry collections The Shallow End of Sleep, Backlit Hour and This American Autopsy, and the memoir House Built on Ashes. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Latin American Literature Today, the anthology Nepantla Familias, and elsewhere. His awards and honors include the Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas, finalist citations for the PEN America Los Angeles award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize, among others. He holds degrees in Biology and Theatre Arts and a PhD in English from Binghamton University. He is editor-in-chief of the national literary journal riverSedge and teaches in the MFA program at The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.

Alexandra Nichole Salazar (she/her/ella) is a PhD student in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies program at UT Austin. Her research focuses on queer kinships and untold histories of South Texas through performance ethnography, archives, and narrative collections. She is also the host of Jotxs y Recuerdos, a podcast dedicated to archiving queer stories from the Rio Grande Valley and other borderlands.

Follow Jotxs y Recuerdos @jotxsyrecuerdos_podcast

Graciela follows in the footsteps of her mother and abuelitas, strong neighborhood women of color cultural workers and activists of San Antonio. As a Buena Gente of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, a community-based cultural arts/social justice organization, Graciela works with staff and community to develop programs that culturally ground working class and poor people of color, queer people and women, individuals who are survivors of cultural genocide. Facilitating conversations on issues of colonization, genocide, power, violence, racism, sexism, and homophobia among others, Graciela works with community members to develop and curate programs such as CineMujer, Uprooted: Tierra, Gente, y Cultura, Palestinians, and Other Occupied Peoples, as well as organize gente to challenge oppressive laws in San Antonio, the United States, and the world.

Veronica Sandoval is a PhD candidate at Washington State University and graduate of UTPA/UTRGV’s MFA in creative writing program. Sandoval’s research interest includes La Chola, the Chola Vida/OG Chola Pinup Network, the Ovarian Psycos, Adelitas, Pachucas, homegirl aesthetics, chola agency, and an emphasis on Chicana feminist epistemology that centers Chicana legacies of resistance. Her frameworks include Chicana feminism, Global Feminism, Chicana Materialism, Motherworks, and Queer of Color Critique. Her research covers a wide array of subjects and political practices such as immigration, the prison industrial complex, cholas, chola agency, Adelitas, Pachucas, lowriders, lowrider arte, and Chola cultural productions such as photography, art, barrio print magazines, social media, podcasts, blogs, and youtube channels. She is also the spoken word artist Lady Mariposa, a sCHOLAr and poet who has been performing for over 20 years. Her writing has appeared in several anthologies and a spoken word CD.

Silvia Patricia Solís is a lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies and Environmental Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Programs and Community Engagement. She is the Art Editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Utah in 2020. Her research expands on land and place-based epistemologies, pedagogies, and methodologies by tracing saberes curativos, curative knowing, and practices people hold in relation to taking care and curing within family and community. It centers intergenerational learning, remembering, and everyday practices in the home and gardens of Indigenous, Black, and Afro-descendant peoples in the diaspora living along the U.S. Mexico border. U.S. Feminist of color, Indigenous Feminists, and decolonial feminist theory are at the center of her theoretical foundations.

Priscilla Celina “Lina” Suárez is a Mexican American author who was the 2015-17 McAllen Poet Laureate. She is co-founder of the Gloria Anzaldúa Legacy Project (GAL) which was formed to honor the legacy of Anzaldúa and share her work with a broader public. During her childhood, she lived surrounded by the farmlands of the then small colonia of Las Milpas, TX, where she first heard many of the cuentos she shares in Cuentos Wela Told Me. Her poetry collection, La La Landia: A Journey Through my Frontera CD Shuffle, is forthcoming this Spring from FlowerSong Press.