That was amazing.
Thank you so much, Adam.
Let's do another round of applause for that
because that was beautiful.
So hi, everybody.
Welcome.
If you don't know who I am, my name is Paola Valenzuela.
I'm the event coordinator here.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And I'm so incredibly honored to be introducing Manuel Paul
López.
Paul's books include Nerve Curriculum,
These Days of Candy, The Yearning Feed, winner
of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize,
and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems.
He also co-edited three anthologies,
Reclaiming Our Stories--
In the Time of COVID and Uprising,
Reclaiming Our Stories 2, and Reclaiming Our Stories.
All three generated from a community-based writers'
workshop of the same name that he co-facilitated since 2016
in the Southeast San Diego.
A CantoMundo fellow, his work has
been published in Bilingual Review, Denver Quarterly, Fairy
Tale Review, Hanging Loose and many others.
Tim Z. Hernandez calls Manuel Paul López one
of the most innovative writers of our time.
Reading his books, it's easy to understand why.
Prose, verse, and play intermingle
to bring us characters and stories that
are both strange and familiar.
Raised in the Imperial Valley of Southern California, El Centro,
Paul's work is informed by the blending of borders
and the unique characters that reside
in the borderlands and his imagination.
In his books, you will encounter post-apocalyptic kiosks,
strange stenographers, rebellious sheep,
and of course, overly opinionated tíos and tías.
As a fellow small town bordertown kid,
I feel comforted by Paul's words, encanto borracho
from Death of a Mexican and Other Poems.
He declares this poem is not about my primo.
This poem is not about him.
This poem is about another.
This poem is about others.
I ask that you prepare yourselves.
These poems are about you and about me and about us.
They capture perfectly the nuance, the uniqueness,
the struggles, and the love that our families and communities
feel.
Welcome, Paul.