Featured Performers:

Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. A CantoMundo Fellow, she’s received residencies and awards from the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, Leeway Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, and is a Tin House Workshop alum. Her work has been published in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, ESPNW and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she’s featured on hundreds of stages from The White House to The Apollo, and co-organizes #PoetsforPuertoRico. She’s based in Philadelphia. Photo credit: Nicholas Nichols

M. Soledad Caballero is Professor of English at Allegheny College. Her scholarly work focuses on British Romanticism, travel writing, post-colonial literatures, WGSS, and the Cognitive Humanities. She is a 2017 CantoMundo fellow, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a New Poet’s Prize, has been a finalist for the Missouri Review’s Jeffry E. Smith poetry prize, the Mississippi Review’s annual editor’s prize and a finalist for the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. She was awarded third Place in the 2018 Split this Rock Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest. Her manuscript has been a finalist for the Crab Orchard Book first book prize and the Saturnalia first book prize. Her poetry has appeared in the Missouri Review, the Mississippi Review, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Memorius, the Crab Orchard Review, Anomalous Press, and other venues. She splits her time between Meadville and Pittsburgh, PA.

Tanya Shirazi is a first generation college graduate, she holds a B.A. in History with minors in English and Latin-American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently an MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the recipient of the Jean Meyer Aloe Poetry Award and a finalist for the Nordan-Kinder Fiction Award. Tanya serves as the Social Media editor for Aster(ix), an award-winning literary journal that focuses on publishing women of color and marginalized voices, and Fiction Editor for Hot Metal Bridge, Pittsburgh’s graduate literary magazine. During her time at Pitt, she hopes to complete a collection of thematically linked short stories which center around Central-American and first-generation American voices. She is invested in hybrid and cross-genre work.

Zeca Gonzalez is a slam-poet born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, raised in Miami. Their main goal is to sneak as many puns into serious poems as they possibly can. They have preformed at Churchill’s Bar in Miami, the 4th River Music Festival, and countless dingy basements. They got their start doing open mics at the Providence Poetry Slam, where they were inspired by astounding writers such as Ilyus Evander, Justice Gains, and Muggs Fogarty. Their work seeks to mix furious political rants, surrealist character pieces, and small comforts into a high energy fever dream. Gonzalez is studying to achieve their Master’s in Social Work, laboring hand-in-hand with oppressed communities towards their empowerment. Their favorite way to shirk all responsibilities is to go camping.

Latinx & Proud! Series Advisory Board:

Adriana E. Ramírez, Eloisa Amezcua, Malcolm Friend & Karla Lamb

The mission of the Latinx & Proud! reading series is to incite conversation, empower, & amplify the Latinx community in Pittsburgh, PA & beyond.