Reading at the Library of Congress Hispanic Division

Out of Our Minds on KKUP

I'm the producer and host of the longest running poetry radio show in the United States: Out of Our Minds on KKUP. I co-founded Sun Yat-sen University's English-language Center for Creative Writing and headed a lecture series at the American Center of the United States Consulate of Guangzhou called "Literature of the Margins." I am the founder of the Poets & Writers Coalition at San Jose State University, the winner of the Virginia de Arujo Academy of American Poets prize and my first book, Imaginary Animal (Willow Books 2015) won their national prize in poetry. I teach Creative Writing and Social Action at California State University Monterey Bay. My nonfiction can be found in In The Red Magazine (South China's Vogue), National Geographic, Benitolink and Mission Village Voice. During the summer of 2018 I was a visiting scholar at the Library of Congress, Hispanic Division, where I conducted research around my grandfather's 1969 testimony for the fair treatment of migrant laborers in California and I recorded poems for the library's archive . I was born and raised in Hollister, California and currently live about 20 minutes west of my hometown.