UTSA Creative Writing Reading Series features author Levi Romero Feb. 1

Levi Romero (Photo by Jeana Rodarte-Romero)

By Kris Rodriguez
Public Affairs Specialist

(Jan. 28, 2013) --The UTSA Department of English Creative Writing Program will present author Levi Romero as the featured speaker in the Creative Writing Reading Series at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 1 in the University Center Harris Room (2.212) on the UTSA Main Campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Romero will read from his book of poems, "A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works" (University of New Mexico Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Southwest Book of the Year Award. In his book, Romero touches on diverse sources including his mother's recollections of life experiences in northern New Mexico.

Romero's additional books include "In the Gathering of Silence" (West End Press, 1996) and the upcoming "Sagrado: A Photopoetics Across the Chicano Homeland" (University of New Mexico Press).

"The America of Romero's poetry is New Mexico, and not the postcard New Mexico either, but the real thing spoken from the real poets -- old folks in old people's homes, low-riders and farmers, the born again and the walking wounded," said acclaimed author Sandra Cisneros. "He honors them all, remembers them all. So long as Levi Romero remembers, this America can never die.

Born in Dixon in northern New Mexico, Romero attended boarding school at Menaul High School in Albuquerque, where he learned literary form and structure by reading the works of a variety of authors including Robert Frost. The bilingual poet, whose language immerses the regional Manito dialect of northern New Mexico with its 17th century archaisms and melodic registers, has seen his works published in the United States, Mexico, Spain and Cuba.

His awards include the 2012 New Mexico Centennial Poet, 2010 Poet Laureate for the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning Program, 2009 New Mexico Women's Press Excellence in Communications Award and the 1996 PBS Bill Moyers Language of Life Award in Poetry.

Romero served as a contributing editor for the book "200 New Mexico Poems" and as the dialogue narrations and editor for the StoryCorps "New Mexico Historias Project" in 2010. Additionally, he co-edited "Metamorfosis: New Mexico Women Writers, Bilingual Anthology" in 2008 and guest edited Blue Mesa Review in 2006.

He received bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture at the University of New Mexico. Currently, Romero serves as an adjunct faculty member and research scholar in Chicana and Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico.

The UTSA reading is sponsored in conjunction with The Macondo Foundation, which works with dedicated and compassionate writers who view their work and talents as part of a larger task of community-building and non-violent social change. Learn more about Macondo writing workshops, grants and residencies, visit them at the Macondo Workshop website.

For more information, visit the UTSA Creative Writing Program.