Marisol Cortez
Marisol Cortez describes herself as “a borderwalking weirdo who writes across genres about place, power, and the possibilities proliferating at the margins.” A committed poet, she “strayed for a time into an academic career,” earning a Ph.D. in cultural studies at the University of California, Davis. before returning to San Antonio to write “in service of collective efforts to protect la madre tierra.” A mother of two, she currently “juggles writing, full-time parenting, and co-editing for Deceleration, an online journal of environmental justice thought and praxis.” In 2020, she published her debut novel Luz at Midnight (FlowerSong Press 2020); in 2021, it won the Texas Institute of Letters’ Sergio Troncoso Award for First Book of Fiction. She is also the author of I Call on the Earth (Double Drop Press 2019), a chapbook of documentary poetry, and “Making Displacement Visible: A Case Study Analysis of the ‘Mission Trail of Tears.’” Together, they bear witness to the forced removal of the Mission Trails Mobile Home Community. Other poems and prose have appeared in Mutha Magazine, About Place Journal, Orion, Vice Canada, Caigibi, Metafore Magazine, Outsider Poetry, Voices de la Luna, and La Voz de Esperanza, among other anthologies and journals. For more information on projects and publications, visit https://mcortez.net.
Marc Dominus
Marc Dominus paints from his studio in Dallas, Texas. A professional artist since 2018, he paints daily in oil and acrylic. Using knives, spatulas, credit cards, and other found objects, he gently maneuvers paints into layers of color and textures which reflect the joy and serenity he feels when in the studio. Marc was influenced early in his artistic journey by Austin-Texas-based artist Sam Coronado, who introduced Marc to color and form.
“With each new painting,” he says, “I anticipate the excitement of an unhurried road trip. No firm destination in mind, each journey generates unique energy, presenting choices, challenges and surprises along the way. Immersed in creation, I experiment with the interplay of color and seek to convey emotions not expressed through words. A painting is complete when my thirst for adventure coalesces into a cohesive reflection on the road traveled. My paintings, therefore, are a diary-like record of my spiritual self, which I hope resonate in the viewer.”
Bernardo Jauregui
Since 1995, the journal Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea and its annual congress has brought together the most important scholars of Mexican literature, distinguishing itself as an essential point of contact for professors and researchers from all over the world to exchange enrich and discuss the vigorous Mexican literary tradition. The journal and congress are part of the University of Texas at El Paso. “Most of our published works are written by researchers from Mexican and North American academic institutions, although we receive contributions from other parts of the world. If you wish to obtain more information, you can contact the offices of the Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea using the following email address: revlitmex@gmail.com.” Its current editor is Bernardo Jauregui, a UTEP graduate with an MA in Spanish literature and currently a lecturer in Spanish at the university. He published Holly Dykstra’s review of Carlos Nicolas Flores’ novel, Sex as a Political Condition, available in archives. Email: mbjauregui@utep.edu
Norma Elia Cantu
Born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas and raised in Laredo, Texas, she is “intimately bound to the US-Mexico border region.” “As a scholar,” she states, “I focus on issues of borders and boundaries whether in academic disciplines or the geopolitical borderlands of Mexico and the United States, all through a Chicana feminist theoretical lens.” She received her master of science degree in English with a minor in political science from Texas A&I University‑Kingsville in 1976 and her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1982. In 2016, she was named Murchison Professor in the Humanities at Trinity University. 2020. meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self Adornment and Identity Construction (University of Texas Press), Cabañuelas: A Love Story (2019), Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Life, Love and Work, under review, University of Arizona Press1997, and Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la frontera. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, paperback edition).
Laurence Wensel
Laurence Wensel is in his 3rd year as a PhD. student in Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research concerns how narratives move from the page to the stage especially in underrepresented populations. This past year he presented at conferences with South Atlantic Modern Language Association (11/20) – “La Vida es Una Inestabilidad: Life is an Instability Machado’s Ladies and Their Familial Struggle with Uncertainty” and London Center (07/20) – “El Grito en La Frontera/The Howl Along the Border: Spaces and Places and a Search for Identity in the Chicano Border plays of Teatro Chicano de Laredo.” Recently, his visual art has been published in Carcosa Magazine (Summer 2021), Reunion (Fall 2020), and his painting in an online gallery “AllTogether Now (Sp/n Gallery (Winter 2020).
Tom McEachin
Tom McEachin is a professor of English at Laredo College. He earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MA in English from Texas A&M International University. He published the sports biography Hot Rod Hundley: You Gotta Love It, Baby, which the Los Angeles Times called, “a very funny and sometimes illuminating journey through the NBA.” His fiction has appeared in The South Dakota Review, Limestone, The Dos Passos Review, The Madison Review, and El Portal.
Email: TMcEachin@aol.com
Website: www.TomMcEachin.com
Roger Rodriguez
Roger Rodriguez is an American author born in Houston, Texas. In 1998, he received the Editor’s Choice Award for outstanding poetry and the best paper in psychology at the 5th annual Guillermo Benavidez Academic Conference at Texas A&M International University. In 2008, he was featured on the Discovery Channel for his book The Grass Beneath His Feet: The Charles Victor Thompson Story, which has been translated into German, Italian, and French editions. The Fajitas and Beer Convention (Anaphora Literary Press 2021) and Six (Anaphora Literary Press 2021) are novels. The Long Way to Mexico, a western thriller about two white desperados fleeing to Mexico, was published by Café Con Leche Publishers in 2021. As a professor of English and sociology at Lone Star College-University Park and Texas A&M International University, he teaches not only English composition and literature but Latin America and Caribbean Cultures, U.S Mexico Border Relations, and Urban Sociology. To contact Roger Rodriguez please write to booksbyroger@yahoo.com.
Website: www.writingbyroger.com
Randy Koch
With an MA in fiction writing from Mankato State University and an MFA in poetry writing from the University of Wyoming, Randy Koch has published two collections of poetry—Composing Ourselves: Sonnets about Teaching Composition on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Fithian Press, 2002) and This Splintered Horse (Finishing Line Press, 2011)—as well as a textbook called Serving Sentences: Twelve Ways to Break Out a Better Writer (Kendall/Hunt, 2nd ed. 2019). His poems have appeared in more than fifty different journals and magazines, including The Texas Observer, Measure, J Journal, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Chiricú Journal, The Caribbean Writer, Revista Interamericana, and English Journal. For over seventeen years he has written for LareDOS: A Journal of the Borderlands. Plus, he recently completed a 470-page family history called Kith & Kin: Koch, Meinert, Tesch, & Vollmer, which tracks his German descendants back to the mid 1700’s. He’s currently revising a manuscript of dramatic monologues about the Spanish conquest of the Americas, tentatively titled Against the Risen Flesh.
E-mail: rjkoch13@yahoo.com
Website: The Re-Con | LareDOS[redux] (laredosnews.com)
Donna Snyder
A longtime activist lawyer in New Mexico and Texas, Donna Snyder has represented indigenous people, people with disabilities, and immigrant workers; she also prosecuted misdemeanor environmental crimes and fraud. She founded the Tumblewords Project in 1995, which sponsors free weekly writing workshops in the El Paso. Presenters have included writers, academicians, and musicians such as Denise Chávez, David Romo, Bobby Byrd, Gene Keller, Rich Yañez, Keith Wilson, Sasha Pimental, Luís Alberto Urrea, and many others. She has published three poetry collections: Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal (Chimbarazu Press), I Am South (Virgogray Press), and The Tongue Has Its Secrets (NeoPoiesis Press). Her work appears in such journals and anthologies as Setu, Red Fez, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, VEXT Magazine, Mezcla, Original Resistance, Puerto del Sol, Miriam’s Well, and Speak the Language of the Land.
Jorge Santana
Jorge Santana was born in Laredo, Texas in 1986. Not only has he participated in numerous international anthologies, but he has published three poetry collections: Psique (Spain 2007). Pornosonetos (Mexico 2011), and Reparaciones (México 2015). Winner of the National Mexican Award of Poetry Reading 2004, the Mexican Publishers Awards for 2010 and the Mexican Award for Published Works 2014, he is widely recognized for his literary work and cultural activism. He is director and founder of Sala Bravo, the only independent and public art center on the Mexican-American border. Finally, he has been a weekly columnist for numerous border publications since 2017.
Carlos Morton
CARLOS MORTON has over one hundred theatrical productions, both in the U.S. and abroad. His professional credits include the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Denver Center Theatre, La Companía Nacional de México, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, and the Arizona Theatre Company. He is the author of The Many Deaths of Danny Rosales and Other Plays (1983), Johnny Tenorio and Other Plays (1992), The Fickle Finger of Lady Death (1996), Rancho Hollywood y otras obras del teatro chicano (1999), Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (2004), and Children of the Sun: Scenes for Latino Youth (2008). A former Mina Shaughnessy Scholar and Fulbright Lecturer to Mexico and Poland, Morton holds an M.F.A. in drama from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in theatre from the University of Texas at Austin. Morton has lived on the border between Mexico and the United States since 1981, teaching at universities in Texas, California and Mexico.
E-mail: cmorton47@ucsb.edu