For more information, to set up interviews, or additional images, please contact:
Jenn Hernandez, Community Relations Manager
AT GALERÍA DE LA RAZA
Lunada Literary Lounge Spring Season 2013
Season Closer: Sunday, June 23
Featuring Los Delicados
The Reunion of the Snake
Open mic sign-up at 7:15pm
$5 admission
Galería de la Raza is proud to be the home of the Lunada Literary Lounge (Lunada), the Bay Area's only full moon bilingual literary, ritual, and performance gathering. The 2013 spring season has been on fire since February, showcasing San Francisco, Bay Area, and beyond performers, poets, authors, and much more.
Next month officially closes out the spring season as we cycle into the summer solstice, and June 23's night features the reunion of Latino spoken word performance troupe and Bay Area beloved sons Los Delicados. In a rare appearance of all three original performers, los poetas del sol melt poetry, dance, comedy, and theater into a "Word Descarga" not to be missed. With John Santos, Israel Matos, Deuce Eclipse, Avotcja, the girls of Mission Girls, Sarah C. Jimenez, Jade Cho, DJ AGANA, V. Lazaro Zamora, Lizz Huerta, and a surprise appearance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña all thus far on the Lunada stage this season, don't miss the special engagement of The Reunion of the Snake.
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About the performers: Founded in 1996 in San Francisco's Mission District, Los Delicados are the leading Latino spoken word troupe. Comprised of writers Norman Zelaya, Darren J. de Leon, and Paul Flores, they come from three different California experiences – Nicoya in San Francisco, Xicano in San Bernardino, and Cuban/Mexican in the borderlands of San Diego – and took the national spoken word scene by storm. In 2001, they released Word Descarga on Calaca Press, and their play Guayaberas By The Pound has been taught on college campuses throughout the country.
Norman Antonio Zelaya is a writer born and raised in San Francisco. He has published several stories in journals including ZYZZYVA, 14 Hills, and NY Tyrant. He is currently finishing a novel set in his old Mission neighborhood.
Darren de Leon (Aztec Parrot) is an award-winning poet from San Bernardino, as well as a playwright, radio producer, street DJ, high school teacher, and community activist. He has published poetry in various publications including New Chicano/Chicana Writings (University of Arizona Press), Cipactli, and 14 Hills. He DJ'ed his first party in 1977 as a seventh-grade student working the tables at a eighth-grade dance. He has been collecting vinyl records since 1973 and has taken his musical presentation, The Eclectic and Sublime, to many galleries, community celebrations, private parties, and fundraisers. As a radio host and producer, he started Radio 2050 in November of 2003 at KPFA in Berkeley. With close to 400 interviews over the last 10 years, he has become one of the most listened to voices about contemporary Latino art on the West Coast, and is one of the most knowledgeable ethnomusicologist of contemporary traditional and dance music. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Paul S. Flores is a published poet, performance artist, playwright, and well-known spoken word artist. Raised in Chula Vista, CA, he spent much of his youth between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, developing a border consciousness. Flores' PEN Award winning novel Along the Border Lies reflects this experience. Flores' plays and past performance projects have taken him from HBO's Def Poetry to Cuba, Mexico, and El Salvador. His first solo show YOU'RE GONNA CRY premiered in 2011. His latest play PLACAS is about Central-American immigrants surviving barrio wars, and will be his sixth full-length stage production. Flores has twice received the National Performance Network's Creation Fund, and was recently awarded the CCI Investing in Artists Grant and a NALAC Fund for the Arts to help develop the first draft of PLACAS. Flores is also a highly respected youth arts development specialist. As a co-founder of Youth Speaks, he introduced spoken word to hundreds of thousands of youth all over the country, from Native reservations to public schools to juvenile halls to counseling centers. He lives in San Francisco with his family of three children.
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About the series: Held every month, on the night of the full moon, Lunada Literary Lounge series is a community gathering where stories, food, songs, and spirit are shared. Located in the heart of the Mission District at Galería de la Raza, each Lunada features community poets, local legends, visiting mystics, and other mero meros of the stage. The curator and host of the Lunada series is Sandra Garcia Rivera.
Sandra Garcia Rivera is an award-winning poet and accomplished vocalist, based in the Bay Area. She has captured audiences throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Europe, both as a solo artist and alongside musical legends. As a vocalist, she has performed and recorded with William Cepeda, John Santos, Los Pleneros de la 21, Rico Pabon, The Welfare Poets, Yomo Toro, Xiomara Fortuna, Laura Pausini, Yerbabuena, Bryan Vargas & Ya Está, The NuyoRican School Poetry Jazz Ensemble, La 21 División, Aguacero, and Las Bomberas de la Bahia. She was a co-founder of Yaya, the Afro-Puerto Rican & Dominican all-women music ensemble based in New York City. As a poet, her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Caribbean Erotic, Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012, Centro Journal, Hostos Review/Revista Hostosiana, and Urban Latino Magazine. She has published two chapbooks: Shoulder High and Divination of the Mistress, and two art editions of her hand-made book That Kiss (Ediciones Mixta, NYC). She appeared in the film Yo Soy Boricua Pa Que Tú Lo Sepa by Rosie Perez, and was the featured poet and mentor of the reality TV show The Chicas Project (Mun2), representing the world renowned Nuyorican Poets Café. In 2001 she travelled to Cuba for the Writers of the Americas Conference, working with writers Junot Diaz, Jack Agüeros, and Danny Hoch. She is currently a teaching artist with SF WritersCorps, a vocalist and percussionist with Hector Lugo y La Mixta Criolla (featured on their debut CD AfroTaino), and the host and curator of the Lunada Literary Lounge at Galería de la Raza. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Antioch University, and is a guest poet/mentor with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program at UC Berkeley.
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Save the date for the 2013 Fall Season: announced summer 2013
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For Calendar Editors
Galería de la Raza presents
Lunada Literary Lounge - June edition
Featuring Los Delicados (Norman Zelaya, Darren de Leon, and Paul S. Flores), "The Reunion of the Snake"
Sunday, June 23, 2013
$5 admission
Open mic sign-ups open at 7:15pm
Readings and performances 7:30pm-10pm
Galería de la Raza | Studio 24
2857 24th St (at Bryant)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 826-8009 office
info@galeriadelaraza.org
2013 Gallery Hours
Open Tue-Sat, 12pm-6pm
