Join us in celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a special reading by Mexican American poets, Rooser Martinez, Karla Cordero, and Chibbi Orduña!
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Christopher “Rooster” Martinez is an educator and spoken word poet from San Antonio, Texas. He earned a MA/MFA in Creative Writing, Literature & Social Justice at Our Lady of the Lake University.He is the author of two poetry books: A Saint for Lost Things (Alabrava Press, 2020) and As it is in Heaven (Kissing Dynamite Poetry Press, 2020)
Karla Cordero is a Chicana poet, educator, and ARTtivist, raised along the borderlands of Calexico, CA. As a performing artist, Karla is the 2013 Grand Slam Champion, aiding the Elevated San Diego Slam Team to rank 4th in the nation at the National Poetry Slam Competition. She has performed for television networks such as NBC 7 San Diego, TBN Juice Live, and the Old Globe Theater. Her poems have appeared in Oprah Magazine, NPR, Academy of American Poets,, The Break Beat Poets Volume 4. LatiNEXT Anthology, among other publications. Karla is the author of How To Pull Apart The Earth (NOT A CULT. ) a 2019 San Diego Book Award winner and awarding-winning finalist for the 2019 International Latino Book Award and the 2019 International Book Award. She currently serves as a professor of creative writing and composition at MiraCosta College. You can follow her work @karlaflaka13
M.R. “Chibbi” Orduña is a Mexican-born, Texas-raised queer poet and spoken word artist, Editor in Chief of The Mixtape Literary Magazine, and director and co-host of the Words and Shit talkshow/podcast. He has self-published 2 books, was a finalist for the 2021 Wax Nine Chapbook Competition, and was the co-editor of the anthology Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out (Flowersong Press, 2020). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Texas Review, Waxwing, The Acentos Review, The B’K, Defunkt, Voices de la Luna, Wax Nine, Homology, Honey Lit, The Latino Book Review Magazine, Buzzfeed, We Are Mitu, George Takei, Button Poetry, Write About Now, and elsewhere.
