Tag Jose Angel Araguz

Ruin & Want cover reveal!

José Angel Araguz 1 Comment

Happy to share the cover for my lyric memoir, Ruin & Want, forthcoming in November from Sundress Publications!

Book cover for Ruin & Want.

Super-excited to share this cover! Thank you to everyone at Sundress Publications for their work on this! Special thanks to Ani Araguz, my partner and artist behind the artwork on this cover. Here’s the original:

Art piece entitled “we go to sleep early so we can dream whats never in it for us.”

This piece is entitled “we go to sleep early so we can dream what’s never in it for us.” I love the sense of at once feeling mired and also breaking apart. This ties into the way ruining and becoming ruins because of want are used as a metaphor in the book.

Also, happy to share that the project has a description as well. Check it out:

Is selfhood constructed? And if so, by whom? Exploring queerness, race, body image, and family, Ruin & Want is a masterful meditation on otherness and identity. In a series of gripping, episodic prose pieces centered on an illicit relationship between a student and his high school English teacher, Araguz peels back the layers of his marginalized identity. By reflecting on his childhood into adulthood, Araguz grapples with finding a sense of self when early, predatory experiences have deeply affected his coming-of-age. In quixotic, deeply eviscerating lyric prose, Araguz delivers a troubling but bold memoir that handles this topic with courage while grieving what it costs survivors to reckon with harm’s aftermath. Yet in the midst of this struggle, we find many bittersweet and lingering gifts such as, “For the first time I saw myself as someone worth seeing,” that make this work necessary and unforgettable.

I’ve been working on R&W since 2016. The work has had me learning and growing over the years. The book is a testament to my survival. The final year of work had me realizing that I have been late in embracing my queer identity, something that has been difficult to do until the completion of this book. Still learning as I go.

Thank you to all who’ve read my work and supported! It means so much to be able to do this work and share with y’all. More soon!

Abrazos,

José 

Salamander virtual event & more!

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment
The flyer for this Thursday’s virtual event.

I’m excited to welcome folks to the next Salamander virtual event happening this THURSDAY, 7/20. Here are the deets:

WHAT: Salamander issue #56 Virtual Reading
WHEN: Thursday, July 20th: 6-7PM EST
WHO: Brent Ameneyro, Milica Mijatović, & Joseph Dante
WHERE: Via Zoom! Register for this event at this link.
[Note: ASL interpretation will be provided at this event.]

Super-excited to be hosting these wonderful writers!

Opportunity for PNW Poets: Airlie Press is seeking full-length manuscripts (48–90 pages) from Pacific Northwest poets who are willing and able to commit to a three-year term of doing the shared work of running a collective press.

Find out more info on their Submittable page.

Also, Black Lawrence Press is having a sale on discounted poetry bundles in preparation for the Sealey Challenge. My own collection, Rotura, is part of the “Sealey Challenge 10 – Poets of Color” bundle. For more info on this sale, check out the BLP site.

Lastly, I had the honor of teaching for the Solstice low-residency MFA program’s summer residency last week. During this residency, amidst the rich conversations about poetry and creative nonfiction (the two genres I teach in), I was able to sit in on a craft class by essayist and novelist Xu Xi on “Writing the Intersection of the Public & Personal.” After the illuminating experience of the class, I have been engaging with samples of her work online. This essay is a good example of the dynamic range Xu Xi is capable of on the page as well as the richness of insight she offers her readers.

Be well 🙂

José