LATINA Y LATINX STORIES - San Antonio Book Festival
April 11, 2026

LATINA Y LATINX STORIES

  • 3:45 pm - 4:30 pm
  •    |   Location of Session: Latino Collection Resource Center
  • Adult Sessions
  • Start of Signing: 4:45 PM
  •    |   Signing Location: Adult Signing Tent

About the Event

JOTA: A Queer Latina y Latinx Anthology is a landmark collection of over 70 queer writers and artists sharing stories, poems, essays, plays, art, and music. Anthology editors Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, Anel I. Flores, and T. Jackie Cuevas join us to honor the radiant visual and written stories of Latina and Latinx ancestors of the past and the present and inspire future writers.  

About the Authors

Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz - The San Antonio Book Festival Photo Credit: Sela Chávez

Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz

Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a Mexicana/Chicana fronteriza queer educator, award-winning translator, writer, activist, and performer from Sonora, Mexico, and southern California. She is a professor at Trinity University, who teaches Mexican, Chicana/o/e/x, and Latina/o/e/x literatures, cultures, gender, sexuality, theater, and performance studies. She authored Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Culture and has coauthored or coedited six books related to her fields of study. Her story “First Visit,” about being undocumented as an undergraduate student, is in the anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on MigrationSurvival, and New Beginnings, coedited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca. Along with her dear friend and colega Dr. L Heidenreich, she coauthored the book Writing That Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx/Latinx Studies, which received the 2025 Chicana Caucus Catrióna Rueda Esquibel Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies.

Rita joins the Book Festival to discuss her latest project, JOTA: A Queer Latina y Latinx Anthology.

Anel I. Flores - The San Antonio Book Festival Photo Credit: Sofia Zuani

Anel I. Flores

Anel I. Flores fuses transfeminism, queerness, and Xicanidad into multidisciplinary visual and literary art centering gender and body autonomy, joy, and healing for Latina/e/x BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, birthing bodies, women, and gender non-binary kin. They aim to tell the story of queer worlds as they are not as they are perceived. They are the author of Curtains of RainEmpanada: A Lesbiana Story en ProbaditasLes Maestres; and the chapbooks La Fea and Behind the Book-Bag. Flores is a coeditor of I Love Us: Queer Voices from South Texas and the Borderlands. Her work can be found in XicanasCamino RealFifth WednesdayEntre Guadalupe y Malinche, and Sinister Wisdom. Their play Empanada has been staged internationally since 2002. Flores’s 30-year retrospective, I Am Home, was exhibited at the Mexican Cultural Institute of San Antonio in 2024. Flores is completing their graphic memoir, Painted Red.

Their honors include UT San Antonio’s Democratizing Racial Justice Artists in Residence Program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; a Catalyst for Change Fellowship from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures; Writer-in-Residence at Our Lady of the Lake University; Women’s Advocate of the Year from University of Texas San Antonio; the Nebrija Creadores Award from the Universidad de Alcala de Henares in Madrid, Spain; and the Accion Women Inspiring Women Award. Flores is a cofounder of Queer Voices Collective, Queer Voices Speak Out, and LezRideSA. Flores served on the San Antonio mayor’s LGBTQIA Task Force and as Co-Reviewer and Committee Member of El Mundo Zurdo. They were also a board member for Macondo Writers Workshop, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, San Antonio Youth Literacy, and Pride Center San Antonio.

Flores coedited JOTA: A Queer Latina y Latinx Anthology.

T. Jackie Cuevas - The San Antonio Book Festival Photo Credit: Ocelotl Mora

T. Jackie Cuevas

T. Jackie Cuevas is the author of Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique and the poetry chapbook Otherhood, USA. Cuevas is on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, cofounder of Evelyn Street Press, and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.

Cuevas joins the Book Festival to discuss JOTA: A Queer Latina y Latinx Anthology, which she coedited.

Moderator

T. Jackie Cuevas - The San Antonio Book Festival

Lupita Aquino

Lupita Aquino—better known as @Lupita.Reads on Instagram and TikTok—passionately spreads her love for books online. She has moderated numerous book events and founded La Comunidad Reads, an author-inclusive book club in partnership with the DC Public Library. Alongside her vibrant online presence, she has contributed insightful book coverage to outlets such as TODAY.com, Aster(ix) Literary Journal, She Reads, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and many more. Notably, Lupita has served as a judge for the 2024 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the 2023 Louise Meriwether First Prize for the Feminist Press, and was on the Selection Committee for the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021. She currently serves on the Authors Committee for the Carol Shields Prize For Fiction. When not immersed in books, she enjoys exploring local bookstores and libraries with her wife and son.

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