This event has passed, but you can watch a recording below!
The Common Fall Launch Party
Thursday, November 9, 2023, 6pm
Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library
Amherst College, Amherst, MA
Free and open to the public, wine and food from La Veracruzana provided.
Join us to celebrate the launch of Issue 26, with three contributors to our portfolio of writing from the farmworker community!
We welcome portfolio co-editor Miguel M. Morales, poet Julián David Bañuelos, and prose writer Nora Rodriguez Camagna for brief readings and conversation about place, immigration, writing, farmwork, and family. All three of our guests grew up doing seasonal farmwork with their families. The event will be hosted by the magazine’s managing editor Emily Everett.
Issues will be available for purchase, but you can also pre-order here.
This event will be co-sponsored by the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, an organization that works with low wage and immigrant workers across Western Massachusetts to create economic, social, and political change.
Portfolio co-editor Miguel M. Morales, and contributors Nora Rodriguez Camagna and Julián David Bañuelos.
Julián David Bañuelos is a Chicano poet and translator from Lubbock, Texas. His poems and translations can be seen in The Cincinnati Review, The Hopkins Review, The Latino Book Review, and many more. His unpublished collection, Las Cancioncitas, was selected as a 2023 National Poetry Series Finalist. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find his work at www.juliandavidbanuelos.com.
Miguel M. Morales grew up in Texas working as a migrant and seasonal farmworker. Selected as a finalist for the 2023-2026 Poet Laureate of Kansas, he is a two-time Lambda Literary Fellow and an alum of VONA/Voices and of the Macondo Writers Workshops. Miguel’s work appears in the anthologies: Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat &Fierce. His work has been published in Duende Journal, Acentos Review, Green Mountains Review, Texas Poetry Review, Hawai’i Review, and World Literature Today, among other journals. Miguel is the co-editor of Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando and of Fat & Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives, which was named the 2021 Book of the Year by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. Miguel has earned several awards including the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award. Follow Miguel as @TrustMiguel on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Nora Rodriguez Camagna grew up in Texas, Mexico, and California’s migrant labor camps, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. As a child, it was her Abuelita Arsenia’s storytelling under their backyard cherry tree that kept her connected to family in Mexico, and inspired her to become a writer. Nora was also inspired by her public school teachers, who introduced her to the magical world of books. Her work has been featured at The Bay Area Book Festival and Stories on Stage Sacramento. She has been a fellow at many juried writer workshops, and has studied under Tommy Orange, Karen E. Bender, Anthony Marra, Gabriela Garcia, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras. She teaches creative writing to underserved students through 916 Ink, a Sacramento nonprofit literacy organization. One of her favorite parts of teaching is inspiring students to recognize that their imaginations have no borders. She lives in California with her husband, and is a mother of three wonderful sons.
Childhood photos of Julián David Bañuelos, Nora Rodriguez Camagna (with family), and Miguel M. Morales.
