The journal is edited as part of ENGL 3037-The Role of the Literary Magazine in Contemporary Literary Production. Although it originated in the English Department of the Humanities Faculty of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, participants include students from all faculties and writers from the larger community. Tonguas poetry “jam sessions” tend to bring together poets of all ages, but most of the events celebrate and promote the poetic innovations of the new generation of emerging writers. Participants have embraced both formal literary techniques and forms of orature and music–urban youth cultural expressions such as hip-hop and graffiti, along with “Def Poetry Jam” and slam style-performance poetry.

Tonguas has also attempted to bring Spanish-dominant, bilingual, and English-dominant writers into greater contact with Caribbean writers through readings and workshops with such artists as Puerto Rican poets Willie Perdomo and Victor Hernández Cruz and novelist Edgardo Vega Yunqué, Dominican poet Sherezada “Chiqui” Vicioso, Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison, St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte, and Miami-based Cuban and Dominican-descended poet Adrian Castro.

Tonguas is published once a year in May and accepts submissions of original poetry, fiction, creative essay, one act dramatic plays, and visual art from all University of Puerto Rico students of the Río Piedras campus. Artists and writers interested in submitting their work for consideration must submit it via the Google Form on the Call for Submissions tab of this website.

To provide a multi-genre artistic and literary magazine quintessence to the pan-ethic perspective, intellect and identity of the students in the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus.