Poets Against Walls welcomes spoken word poet, Veronica Sandoval, aka Lady Mariposa, back home to the Valley! At this summer kick-off reading, special guest poets include Esther Martinez, Stevie Luna, César De León, Priscilla Celina Suarez, Erika Garza-Johnson, and more.

After the special guests and Veronica Sandoval share their work, there will be a Poets Against Walls open mic (one poem per person, 3 minutes or less). While we do not have a set theme, we encourage poems related to our mission of defining our borderlands for ourselves, poems about living in the borderlands, breaking identity barriers, WoC, feminist and LGBTQIA+ experiences. We embrace social justice work that aims to reflect and thus empower our communities.

During the event, we will also share information on upcoming creative writing workshops sponsored by Poets Against Walls and Lady Mariposa's free "Queering Cuentos" creative writing workshops sponsored by Aunt Lute Books. If you would also like to share information about creative writing opportunities in the Valley this summer, please message Poets Against Walls.

FEATURED POET's BIO: Veronica Sandoval is a spoken word artist who writes under the name Lady Mariposa. Her spoken word CD is "Hecha en El Valle: Spoken Word & Borderland Beats." She is an old school chola, and street poet who was performing poetry in the Rio Grande Valley even before she ever thought she would enter academia. She holds an MFA from UT Pan American and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in American Studies at Washington State University. She is a Chicana feminist who teaches and engages intersectional feminism, pop culture, and queer theory. For three weeks this May-June, she will be facilitating free "Queering Cuentos" creative writing workshops for the LGBTQIA+ community in the RGV, using Gloria Anzaldúa's "Borderlands/La Frontera" book as a text and sponsored by Aunt Lute Books, with support from the AKR Foundation. For more information on the workshops, please contact queeringcuentos@gmail.com.

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