Join Newfound journal contributors and chapbook winners for a reading… everyone is welcome! Featuring M.J. Gette, Rodney Gomez, Catherine Pikula, and Octavio Quintanilla (left to right, below). Gette and Quintanilla will incorporate visual poetics in their readings, and chapbooks and the latest print issue will be for sale.
Megan Jeanne (M.J.) Gette’s work explores ecological relationships within a postcolonial discourse of translation, dislocation and hybridity. Her winning chapbook was developed out of a residency with Arquetopia, Oaxaca, and the Marcella DeBourg Fellowship. She is twice recipient of FLAS fellowships to study the Kaqchikel language in Guatemala with Oxlajuj Aj’, a language revitalization and decolonization project through Tulane University. She has worked as a translator and researcher for various NGOs and nonprofits in the Americas since 2010, and has performed her work in both academic and local settings as a species of poetic theory—thought that is relative to the linguistic borders that aim to purify, hide, or package it. Her winning chapbook, The Walls They Left Us, was published by Newfound in spring of 2016.
Rodney Gomez is the author of the forthcoming collection Citizens of the Mausoleum (Sundress Publications, 2018). His chapbooks include Mouth Filled with Night (Northwestern University Press, 2014), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, and A Short Tablature of Loss (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017), winner of the Ran Arroyo Chapbook Prize. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rattle, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, Blackbird, and RHINO, where it won the Editors’ Prize. Born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, he earned a BA from Yale and an MFA from the University of Texas–Pan American. He has been awarded residencies to the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute. He has also served on the board of Migrant Health Promotion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of migrants, immigrants, and related populations. He edits the accompanying anthology to El Retorno, an annual event honoring Gloria E. Anzaldúa held at the University of Texas-Pan American. He works as an urban planner in Weslaco, Texas. His winning chapbook, Spine, was published by Newfound in spring of 2015.
Catherine Pikula is a glorified secretary by day and writer all of the time. She studied literature and philosophy at Bennington College and poetry at NYU. Her chapbook I’m Fine. How Are You? was selected by Chloe Caldwell as winner of the 2018 Newfound Prose Prize. You can find her poetry online in places like Poor Claudia and Cosmonauts Avenue. Currently, she is researching relationship anarchy and the porn industry’s effects on learned perceptions of gender and sexuality expression.
Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014) and the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, and others. His visual work has been featured in the AllState Almaguer Art Gallery in Mission, TX, and an exhibit is forthcoming at The Weslaco Museum. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.
