Author Leticia Urieta

NHCC News:

ALBUQUERQUE — The National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) is hosting author Leticia Urieta on August 18 for an online book reading featuring a distinctive combination of traditional folklore and speculative fiction.

“Leticia’s mix of traditional tales and supernatural elements fits perfectly into the work we do at the Center to showcase the many forms that Hispanic and Latin tales can take,” said NHCC’s chief executive, Dr Margie Huerta.

Urieta will read Las Criaturas, a hybrid collection that blends poetic and speculative narrative forms to tell untold stories of women, playing with traditional storytelling forms and tales to explore monstrous, unruly strength and beauty and vulnerable of the feminine and seek to recover the power of people in situations of powerlessness. Urieta also plans to read a few unpublished works, giving listeners a deeper look into her unique writing style.

The event is the second in NHCC’s “historia, idioma, e identidad” series, which focuses on authors who explore the complex and multifaceted ways Hispanics and Latinos imagine their own identities set in historical context, putting emphasis on race, nationality, ethnicity, language, gender, sexuality, religion and ability.

Urieta’s work is also featured in the NHCC’s Fronteras del Futuro: Art in New Mexico and Beyond exhibition, which showcases the art of Latin and Indigenous creators that explores the intersections of art, science, ancient and modern technologies, cosmic reflections, future-looking visions, and more.

Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, Texas. She is a freelance writer, artist teacher in the greater Austin community, and regional program director of Austin Bat Cave, a literary community serving students in the Austin area. She is also the director of Barrio Writers, a free writing workshop for college-level youth in Austin. Leticia graduated from Agnes Scott College with a BA in English/Creative Writing and holds an MA in Fiction Writing from Texas State University.

His fiction explores the intersections of Latinx identity with folklore, traditional stories, and the supernatural or speculative. His work appears or is forthcoming in Cleaver, Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, The Offing, Kweli Journal, Medium, Electric Lit and others. Her chapbook, The Monster, was published in 2018 by LibroMobile Press and Las Criaturas is now out by FlowerSong Press.

This event and others in the “history, idioma, e identidad” series are generously supported by Centraide. To sign up for reading books online, go to https://my.nmculture.org/11498/12101.

About the National Hispanic Cultural Center

The National Hispanic Cultural Center is dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and advancement of Hispanic culture, arts, and humanities. OCNC presents mission-related events throughout the year, some produced by its history, literature, performance, and visual arts programs, and others in partnership with outside organizations. Events take place on its 20+ acre campus, which includes a plaza, art museum, historically designated building, library, and genealogy center. The NHCC is a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and is additionally supported by the National Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation.