#MarginsBookselling

#MarginsBookselling presents:
Angela María Spring (Duende District) in conversation with Vanessa Angélica Villarreal to celebrate MAGICAL/REALISM
About the panelists:
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley to Mexican immigrants. She is the author of Beast Meridian, which received a Whiting Award, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award nomination, and the Texas Institute of Letters John A. Robertson Award. She was a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles with her son.
Angela Maria Spring (she/they) is a poet, journalist, and the owner of Duende District, a bookstore sin fronteras for and by people of color, where all are welcome. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and you can find their recent work in The Slowdown, A Public Space, The Washington Review of Books, Catapult, LitHub, and Tor.com. Her poetry collection, DESMADRE: POEMS, is forthcoming from Flowersong Press.
Register and the link will be emailed to you approx.1 hour before event begins. Add [e-mail] as a contact/whitelist to ensure your invite doesn't end up in Spam.

ABOUT MAGICAL/REALISM
A brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture-from Beyoncé to Game of Thrones-to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by migration and colonialism.
Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality.
In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.
The border between the real and imagined is a speculative space where we can remember, or re-world, what has been lost-and each chapter engages in this essential project of world-building. In one essay, Villarreal examines her own gender performativity through Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can help us interpret and heal when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember-her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce-and finds a way to archive her history and map her future(s) with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking.
Magical/Realism is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories-broadening our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be.

About The Word | A Storytelling Sanctuary
The Word | A Storytelling Sanctuary is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2016 to support literary creatives identifying from marginalized communities across race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and emotional and physical disabilities. The Word is community-led, with a 100% BIPOC-identifying board and staff, with intersectional identities in LQBTQIA2S+ and disabled communities. The Word challenges the practices that perpetuate bias that are reliant on outdated stereotypes to determine who writes, publishes, and reviews literature. The Word does this by providing concrete tools and knowledge; building intentional community; increasing visibility; amplifying equity conversations; and advocating for systemic change within the industry. For more information visit www.thewordfordiversity.org/ and follow us on Instagram/X @wordisdiversity.
Our mission is storytelling for collective abundance. We center authentic storytelling for BIPOC, LGBTQIAP2S+, neurodiverse, and disabled communities; support and connect writers, publishers, booksellers, and readers; explore and build collective models for the literary ecosystem; and hold safe space in community. Our main programs include the Editor-Writer Mentorship, [margins.] Literary Conference + Book Festival, and #MarginsBookselling, including the BIPOC Bookseller Award. We always have new events and programming to share, so we hope you’ll check out thewordfordiversity.org to stay up-to-date and connected.