Join Holocaust Museum Houston for a memorable night of social justice, poetry, and art, featuring author Leslie Contreras Schwartz. Interweaving readings from her new book, “Who Speaks for Us Here,” with discussion, Contreras Schwartz will captivate audiences with an exploration of poetry and art as tools for nonviolent resistance and for healing.
Newly released from Skull + Wind Press, “Who Speaks for Us Here” uses poetry to examine the divide between individual and public bodies as it documents narratives of those usually silenced, including people with mental illness, sex workers, women who are trafficked, and children in custody while it also unpacks the history of her family, especially the women thereof. A poet, activist, and mother, Contreras Schwartz shines in this stirring collection as she speaks directly to so many facets of our American moment.
Following the event there will be a book signing for “Who Speaks for Us Here” and a meet and greet opportunity with the author.
ABOUT LESLIE CONTRERAS SCHWARTZ
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is the fourth Houston Poet Laureate, serving from 2019-2021. She is a multi-genre writer whose book Nightbloom & Cenote (St. Julian Press, May 2018), was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She is also the author of Fuego, and was a featured poet for the 2018 Houston Poetry Fest. A member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros for socially engaged writers, Contreras Schwartz’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, The Missouri Review, The Collagist, [PANK], Iowa Review, Verse Daily, Catapult, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. She is a graduate of The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and earned a bachelor’s at Rice University.
ABOUT SKULL + WIND PRESS
Skull + Wind Press is a poetry publisher striving to publish diverse voices of national importance while closely tending to our regional responsibilities. As an organization based in, and in love with, our local community in Albuquerque and our wider communities in New Mexico and the Southwest, we also strive to build and foster an inclusive community that can support these voices.
