NP, LIbrotraficantes, & Lupe Mendez at Taano House, Austin.
Join us for an evening on the art of book smuggling and mind-altering prose and poetry. We are thrilled to celebrate the release of Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works.
Part of the Global Reading Series, funded in part by the Brown Foundation.
Lupe Mendez made his literary debut on the stage of Nuestra Palabra. He has gone on to become the Texas Poet Laureate. Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works forms part of TCU’s Poet Laureate Series. He is also the co-founder of Tintero Projects, the poetry editor for The Texas Observer, and Poetry Editor of Huizache.
Professor Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, and founder of Nuestra Palabra, serves as Master of Ceremonies for this evening of contraband prose.
Nuestra Palabra will provide book sales. Buy your copy and get it signed. Each purchase supports Latino publishers and writers, and helps Nuestra Palabra continue to give back to the community.
In addition, you will hear from new and rising voices, with an exhibit of Latino Visual art and Latino books.
Our partner Taano House is a kava bar/non-alcoholic botanical cocktail bar and psychoactive plant dispensary on East Sixth in Austin, Texas. Their focus is experiential alternatives to alcohol. They work with a wide variety of legal euphoric and relaxing plants and offer a full elixir menu as well as gummies and extracts. Some favorites include Amanita muscaria (fly agaric), fresh Fijian kava, kanna, and Egyptian blue lotus.
Admission is free. Dress warm, this is an outdoor event.
RSVP in LUMA, check in that evening, and stay. You will be entered in a drawing for banned books. Winner must be present and down for cultura..
Prayer Holding Night: New & Selected Works ranges from excerpts from Mendez’s collection. Why I Am Like Tequila to new poems featuring redacted poems based on real-life press releases that add profound meaning to press releases by Texas officials, to homages to Galveston and the ocean.
Professor Tony Diaz, El Librotraficante, is the author of The Tip of The Pyramid: Cultivating Community Cultural Capital and The Aztec Love God.
The 2012 Librotraficante Caravan, which smuggled into Tucson the books in the prohibited Chicano Studies Curriculum banned by Arizona officials, was founded by Tony Diaz, Laura Razo, Bryan Parras, Liana Lopez, and Lupe Mendez.
To stock your under ground library, visit: www.NuestraPalabra.org
Sponsors:
Taano House
The Law Office of Carolina Ortuzar-Diaz, PLLC
The BIPOC Arts and Network Fund - BANF
Librotraficante
Email us to get involved: info@NuestraPalabra.org