Moderated by Freddy Martinez and Eva Mayhabal Davis, invited guest writers will speak about their experiences working with established publishing institutions and how people of color are instigating change in publishing.
Fundación Amoxtli is a future literary incubator that will support the work of underrepresented writers, translators, and those devoted to the craft of fiction through its writing residency program, workshops, and publications. Donations at this event will go to support Fundación Amoxtli.
Speakers are Seph Rodney, Nadxieli Nieto, Amanda Alcántara, Florencia Escudero and Gaby Collins Fernandez
Seph Rodney, PhD, is a senior editor and writer for Hyperallergic, writing on contemporary art and related issues. He was born in Jamaica, and came of age in the Bronx, NY. He has an English degree from Long Island University, Brooklyn; a studio art MFA from the University of California, Irvine; and a PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London in museum studies. Also, while in London, he created, produced, and hosted a radio show called The Thread, broadcast on Resonance FM from 2008-2011. He has also written for CNN Op-ed pages, American Craft Magazine and NBC Universal, and penned catalogue essays for Joyce J. Scott, Teresita Fernandez, and other artists. He can be heard on the podcast “The American Age”. In 2006, he was featured speaker in the Favorite Poem Project. His book, The Personalization of the Museum Visit, will be published by Routledge Press on May 31, 2019.
Nadxieli Nieto is an editor, writer, and art director, and on the steering committee of Latinx in Publishing. She is the co-editor of the anthologies Miniature Nightmares (Catapult, 2020), Tiny Crimes (Black Balloon, 2018), Gigantic Worlds (Gigantic Books, 2015), Carteles Contra Una Guerra / Peace Signs (Gustavo Gili/Edition Olms, 2003), which won the Premis Ciutat de Barcelona, and others. She is the former Director of the PEN America Literary Awards Program, and former editor of NOON annual and Salt Hill Journal. Her writing has appeared in The New York Tyrant, West Wind Review, Washington Square Review and elsewhere, and her collaborative artist books may be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum. You may find her online at @nadxinieto.
Amanda Alcántara is a writer and journalist. She is the author of “Chula.” She has been published on Latino USA, Remezcla, Latino Voices and Black Voices on The Huffington Post, The Washington Post’s The Lily, BESE, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Since 2018, she has been the Digital Media Editor at Futuro Media Group, working with NPR’s Latino USA and Latino Rebels. In May of 2017, Alcántara obtained a Master of Arts from NYU in Latin American and Caribbean Studies where her thesis focused on the experience of women residing on the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Alcántara is also a co-founder and previous editor of La Galería Magazine. She has been published in the anthology Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA, published by Red Sugarcane Press. Alcántara has a BA from Rutgers University. A map of the world turned upside down hangs on her wall.
Florencia Escudero is an artist working at the intersection of sculpture, photography and digital imagery. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her works deal with questions of the body and the representation of desire in relationship to consumer culture. Escudero’s works have been exhibited internationally and in the U.S. She was a 2016 year-long Artist in Residence at the Loisaida Center, New York, NY, and has also completed residencies at Art Farm, Marquette, NE, and Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle, WA. Works by Escudero have been discussed in Editorial Magazine, Aether Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, and The American Reader. She is also the co-founder and, co-editor at Precog Magazine (www.precogmag.xyz).This is an ongoing annually published collaborative project that she works on with Kellie Konapelsky and Gaby Collins Fernandez.
Gaby Collins-Fernandez is an artist living and working in New York City. She received an MFA from the Yale School of Art and BA from Dartmouth College. Her work has been shown in the US and internationally, currently in a survey of contemporary art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, and has been discussed in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail, Artinfo, and artcritical. Collins-Fernandez is also a writer whose texts have appeared in publications such as Painters on Paintings, The Miami Rail, artcritical, and The Brooklyn Rail. Collins-Fernandez is also co-founder and editor of Precog Magazine, an annual art and literature zine, and is the co-director of BombPop!Up Productions, a Brooklyn-based, artist-run initiative producing art pop-up art and music shows.
Freddy Martinez is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Fellow, a former Stevan A. Baron Work Scholar at Aperture Foundation, and was an Artist in Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. His writing has been shared by VICE, Remezcla, Aperture, TIME, and GUP Magazine. He is a co-editor of Sótano and one of the authors of Los Sumerigdos (published by Alejandro Cartagena y Carlos Loret de Mola, 2019).
