Event Feature: Hispanic Heritage Month Reading
The Muse is celebrating Hispanic and Latin@ Heritage Month on Friday, October 2nd at 7 pm EST with poetry and prose from Latin@ writers. We are honored to share our space with these voices: Michelle Moncayo, Ire’ne Lara Silva, Mike Soto, and Melissa Coss Aquino.
This reading will be hosted by Muse Teaching Artist Amanda Galvan Huynh!
Learn more about the Writers:
Michelle Moncayo is a first-generation Dominican-Ecuadorian poet in New Jersey. She received a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Michelle is a recipient of fellowships & residencies from SPACE at Ryder Farm, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, CantoMundo, and VONA. Her poetry has appeared in Palette Poetry, Ninth Letter, & No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant and First-Generation American American Poetry, among others. She received her B.A. in English from Rutgers University where she received Honorable Mention for both the Academy of American Poets’ Enid Dame Memorial Prize, and the Evelyn Hamilton Award. You can find her poetry and visual art at michellemoncayoart.com. She is always down for a good sancocho. You can also find her on Instagram!
ire’ne lara silva is the author of three poetry collections, furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016), and CUICACALLI/House of Song (Saddle Road Press, 2019), an e-chapbook, Enduring Azucares, (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015), as well as a short story collection, flesh to bone (Aunt Lute Books, 2013) which won the Premio Aztlán. Her most recent poetry collection, CUICACALLI/House of Song, was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Prize. She and poet Dan Vera are also the co-editors of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, (Aunt Lute Books, 2017), a collection of poetry and essays. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award, and the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldúa Milagro Award. ire’ne is currently working on her first novel, Naci, and her second collection of short stories, the light of your body.
Mike Soto is the author of the chapbooks, Beyond the Shadow’s Ink, and most recently Dallas Spleen. He received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, & was awarded the James Merrill Poetry Fellowship by Vermont Studio Center in 2019. His debut collection of poetry, A Grave Is Given Supper, was published by Deep Vellum and is now available.
Dr. Melissa Coss Aquino is a Puerto Rican writer from The Bronx and an Associate Professor in the English department at Bronx Community College, CUNY. She serves as the co-faculty advisor for Thesis, the literary journal of BCC. Her work has been published in Callaloo, The Fairy Tale Review, Hippocampus and Centro. Her book, Jesús Colón: 100 Years of A Radical Puerto Rican in New York is under contract and set to be published in 2021. She has an essay in Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making ~ An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics (2019). She received her MFA from The City College of New York, CUNY and her Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY in English. She is a proud VONA, AROHO and Hedgebrook alumna.
Amanda Galvan Huynh (she/her) is a Mexican American writer and educator from Texas. She is the author of a chapbook, Songs of Brujería (Big Lucks September 2019) and Co-Editor of Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making: An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics (The Operating System 2019). Amanda has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. She was a 2016 AWP Intro Journal Project Award Winner, 2018 Best of the Net Winner, a finalist for the 2015 Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poetry can be read in print and online journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, The Southampton.
This virtual reading will be streamed on Facebook LIVE!
