GRIEF: PROCESSING AND POETRY

12:00 pm - 12:45 pm
| Location of Session: Latino Collection Resource Center
Adult Sessions

Start of Signing: 1:00 pm
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

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About the Event

In the eaters of flowers, Texas Poet Laureate ire’ne lara silva writes about the loss of her brother, her adopted song. In her unique canto style she sings the stunned, broken months following his death, navigating grief, loss, loneliness, and the remembrance of joy as she begins to reassemble her life. In his debut collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, Saúl Hernández documents grief alongside trauma, queer desire, and familial love. These poets will delve into grief, love, and transformations.

About the Authors

Photo Credit: Bradley Miller

Saúl Hernández

Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, Texas, who was raised by undocumented parents and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the winner of a Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize, judged by Joy Priest; and a Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, chosen by Victoria Chang. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His first poetry collection is How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of ire'ne lara silva

ire’ne lara silva

ire’ne lara silva, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections including furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, and FirstPoems; two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos; and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize. Her first comic book, VENDAVAL, is forthcoming. ire’ne is the recipient of a Tasajillo Writers Grant; a National Assocation of Latino Arts and Cultures Fund for the Arts Grant; the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award; and was the Fiction Finalist for A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Gift of Freedom Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the Texas Institute of Letters Edwin “Bud” Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. She is a contributor to Texas, Being: A State of Poems and her latest poetry collection is the eaters of flowers.

Moderator

Sasha West

Sasha West is the author of Failure and I Bury the Body (2013) and How to Abandon Ship (2024). Her first book won the National Poetry Series, a Texas Institute of Letters Award, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship. Recent poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, Georgia Review, and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her collaborative multi-media shows with visual artist Hollis Hammonds have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, ArtPrize 2023 Michigan, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University.