El Pal brings you the voices of New Mexico

April 16th, 2024

Please join us for a reading panel and Q&A with three contributors to the spring 2024 issue of El Palacio magazine including: 

• Jean Toomer’s Search for Identity in Taos by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, which recounts the complex historical and personal contexts—including his experiences in Taos—that led Jean Toomer to reject traditional ideas of race.
•  Tinieblas by Leeanna Torres, an essay about her profound experience during a Penitente service in her home community of Tomé.
• The Sound of Community by Lazarus Letcher, an article about New Mexican filmmaker StormMiguel Florez’s documentary, The Whistle, which recounts lesbian life in Albuquerque in the 1980s.

Following the readings, editor of El Palacio, Emily Withnall, will facilitate a Q & A. Light refreshment will be served.    

ABOUT THE WRITERS 

• Darryl Lorenzo Wellington was the sixth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe. His poems and essays on African American history and writers, and poverty and racism have appeared in many publications including the anthology Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country. His most recent collection is Legible Walls: Poems for Santa Fe Murals.
• Leeanna T. Torres is a Nuevomexicana with deep Indo-Hispanic roots. Her essays have appeared in High Country News, Blue Mesa Review, and High Desert Journal, among other publications. Leeanna’s essays also appear in the anthologies First & Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100, and Elementals: An Elemental Life, Vol. 5.
• Lazarus Letcher (they/them) is a Ph.D candidate in American Studies at UNM. They have written for Autostraddle, them, and dry academic journals. They play viola for Eileen & the In-Betweens and for art installation performances with Stages of Tectonic Blackness.