POETICS OF PLACE

3:15 pm - 4:15 pm
| Location of Session: Swartz Stage
Adult Sessions

Start of Signing: 4:30 pm
| Signing Location: Festival Marketplace

My Schedule

About the Event

What does it mean to be “from” somewhere? In Querida by Nathan Xavier Osorio, the poems meditate on immigration, collective memory, and the San Fernando region of Los Angeles. In the fourth collection by José Antonio Rodríguez, The Day’s Hard Edge, the poems question how to construct a relationship to self, community, and poetry. These poets will ask us to contemplate personal and cultural identities.

About the Author

Photo Credit: Kristi Osorio

Nathan Xavier Osorio

Nathan Xavier Osorio is the author of The Last Town Before the Mojave, selected by Oliver de la Paz as a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship. He received his PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His writing has also appeared in Notre Dame Review, The Offing, Boston Review, Public Books, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His writing and teaching have been supported by fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry Foundation. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. His debut full-length collection, Querida, was selected by Shara McCallum as the winner of the 2024 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and is available now.

Photo Credit: Mark Roemisch

José Antonio Rodríguez

José Antonio Rodríguez is the author of the poetry collections This American Autopsy, Backlit Hour, and The Shallow End of Sleep, and the memoir House Built on Ashes. He’s been awarded the Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas, the Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and has been a finalist for the PEN America Los Angeles Literary Award and the Lambda Literary Award, among others. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, Nation, New Republic, and elsewhere. His work has also been included in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, The Norton Introduction to Literature, and A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025. He holds a PhD in English from Binghamton University and teaches writing and literary translation at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. His new collection of poetry is The Day’s Hard Edge.

Moderator

Saúl Hernández

Saúl Hernández is a queer writer who was raised by former undocumented parents. He’s a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Saúl is the winner of both the 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize judged by Joy Priest & the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize judged by Victoria Chang. His debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is out now. His work is featured in American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, etc.