LUNADA - Spring Season Closer 2012

Spoken Word * Música * Open Mic

The LUNADA Spring Season Closer for 2012, features two special guests in a rare performance at Galeria de la Raza: TIM Z. HERNANDEZ and AYA DE LEON, award winning artists of spoken word, hip-hop theater, fiction and storytelling. Join us at Galeria on Saturday May 5th, as they share works from recent novels, poetry, and stories, offering true expressions of liberation and healing on Cinco de Mayo . OPEN MIC sign-up is at 7:15, musicians and first-timers always welcome at LUNADA Literary Lounge.

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$5 Admission
FREE with food dish to share, or with Galería membership.

ARTIST BIOS:

Tim Z. Hernandez is a writer and performer originally from Central California’s San Joaquin Valley. He has studied extensively in a variety of mediums including: creative writing, physical theater and murals. His written work and art have been published in various anthologies, and his performances have been featured in prestigious venues such as: LA’s Getty Center Museum, The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts, Stanford University, and at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.   In the past, he’s been commissioned by major groups such as the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, and the National Fanny Mae Foundation to write and perform his original plays on issues such as homelessness and poverty. He’s the recipient of several notable awards inc luding: 2006 American Book Award for his debut collection of poetry Skin Tax, 2006 Zora Neal Hurston Award for writers of color dedicated to their communities, and the 2003 James Duval Phelan Award sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation. His debut novel, Breathing, In Dust (Texas Tech University Press, 2010) recently received the 2010 Premio Aztlan Prize in Fiction, was a finalist for the California Book Award, and was featured on NPR's All Things Considered by Alan Cheuse.  He received his BA in Writing & Literature from Naropa University, and his MFA from Bennington College in Vermont. He is a frequent visiting writer at Universities and literary venues across the U.S. When he’s not writing, he works as an arts education consultant for non-profit groups, foundations, libraries, and school districts across the nation, offering workshops to youth and aspiring writers and performers. He currently lives in Colorado with his family.

Writer, performer, hip hop theater artist, poetic activist, and community healer Aya de Leon lives in the Oakland Bay Area. She is the Director of June Jordan's Poetry for the People, teaching poetry, spoken word, and hip hop at UC Berkeley. Her work has received acclaim in the Village Voice, Washington Post, American Theatre Magazine, the Oakland Tribune, and San Francisco Chronicle. She was named best discovery in theater for 2004 by the SF Chronicle, and also in 2004, she received a Goldie award from the SF Bay Guardian in spoken word. In 2005 she was voted "Slamminest Poet" in the annual East Bay Express Best of the Bay. In November 2006, Aya performed in Voices of a People’s History with Mos Def, Alice Walker, Luis Valdez, Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove, and others. In April of 2005, Aya and Mos Def co-hosted a kickoff rally for Current TV, Al Gore’s new cable network. In 2004, she appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and was a finalist for Showtime's American Candidate Reality TV series. She has shared the stage with a wide range of performers, including hip hop and spoken word artists Mos Def, KRS ONE, The Roots, Saul Williams, De La Soul, The Coup, Mystic, Sarah Jones and Danny Hoch; literary artists Sonia Sanchez, Tillie Olsen, Walter Mosley and Alice Walker; musicians Tracy Chapman, Bonnie Raitt, Alanis Morrisette, Susana Baca, and activists Danny Glover, Barbara Lee, Julia Butterfly Hill, Al Gore, Woody Harrelson, Howard Zinn and Ram Dass, She is a co-author of the 2004 book How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office.

Lance Canales is the front man for touring Americana/roots blues act, Lance Canales & The Flood.  Canales hails from the southern foothills of California’s Central Valley, where he literally lived the life often found at the heart of roots music; hard labor, a one room shack, and taunting ghosts whispering of a better life.  With vocals that compare to the likes of Tom Waits and Greg Brown, and hard toil music as the backdrop for stories masquerading as lyrics.

Sandra García Rivera is an award-winning poet and prose writer. Most recently her work has appeared in the anthologies Caribbean Erotic (Peepal Tree Press, Leeds); Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2010; as well as in the Centro Journal; Hostos Review/Revista Hostosiana; Urban Latino Magazine; and Manteca. She has published two chapbooks: Shoulder High, and Divination of the Mistress, and two special editions of her hand-made books That Kiss (Ediciones Mixta, NYC). Poet and chanteuse, she has captured audiences throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Cuba, Holland and Great Britain with her Nuyorican soul and blues inspired delivery, both as a solo artist, and alongside musical legends. She recently earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, from Antioch University in Los Angeles, with a mission of social justice as the artist's role in society.

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