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Victoria Bañales
Workshop: Poetic Racial Justice: Healing Our Streets
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Dr. Victoria Bañales is the 2025-2027 Watsonville Poet Laureate. A Chicanx educator and writer, she is the founder of Journal X, a social justice literary arts magazine. Her debut book of poetry, The Sun Will Not Harm You by Day, Nor the Moon by Night, is set to be released summer, 2025. She has led poetry workshops for the City of Watsonville, La Raíz Magazine, and in the classroom at Cabrillo College, where she teaches English composition, literature, and creative writing. More at www.vickybanales.com.
Lara Gularte
Workshop: Writing Words to Light the Way
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Lara Gularte is Poet Laureate Emeritus of El Dorado County 2021 to 2023. Her most recent book, Fourth World Woman, was published by Finishing Line Press, and her book, Kissing the Bee, about her California Portuguese pioneer ancestors was published by The Bitter Oleander Press in 2018. She is known for conducting poetry/writing workshops at the Switchboard Gallery of Arts & Culture El Dorado, the Mills Station Arts & Culture Center, the Riparian Area Project, a collaborative project of Myrtle Tree Arts and the American River Conservancy, Mule Creek State Prison, Gold Country Writers, the Tahoe Literary Festival 2024, and an ongoing writing workshop at the Cameron Park Library in Cameron Park.
Nicole Henares
Workshop: Inhabiting the Song: Writing Through the Bolero
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Nicole Henares (Aurelia Lorca) is a poet, storyteller, and teacher who lives in Half Moon
Bay, California. She has her BA in English from UC Davis, her MFA in Writing and Consciousness from California Institute of Integral Studies, and is an alumna of the Voices of Our Nation Writing Workshops. She is interested in how Lorca’s duende, the duende of Andalusia and flamenco, is a cross cultural spirit. Since 2015, she has been singing La Llorona, pouring ashes over her head, not realizing that the ashes contain punk rock spikes, and how and why she has always been the unwanted fairy who has never lost her spark.
Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl
Workshop: Walk Through the Museum: A Poetry Workshop About the Places We Call Home
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl, or Diosa X for short, is a multilingual and multidimensional spoken word artist, workshop facilitator, and international poetiza. She is a seasoned language arts educator with a Bachelor’s in English and a Master’s in Cross-Cultural Teaching. Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl is currently serving as a board member for Círculo de poetas and Writers, works as a Poet-Teacher with California Poets in the Schools, and is a workshop presenter for Palabras del Pueblo and writing coach for Quill & Company. Diosa X has been published in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines in the U.S. and in Mexico, and most recently in Brazil. She is the author of six poetry collections with her seventh collection, MeXicana, slated to be released in August 2025 by Riot of Roses Publishing. To learn more about Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl’s work, feel free to visit her website at www.diosax.net.
Juan Flores
Workshop: Writing our Stories to Preserve our Heritage, Educate our Youth, and Engender Change
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Juan Flores is an experienced writing teacher who uses the freewriting technique to give students an opportunity to write and share their writing. He is part of the Central Valley Chicana and Chicano Writers' Collective, a community of Chicana and Chicano professionals who believe in the power of stories to save lives. The Collective believes everyone has a strong unique voice and is born with creative genius. The Collective’s latest publication is Transcending Borders: The Central Valley Writers Premio Literario. It's a collection of stories, essays and poems by Dreamers ages 18-24. Juan Flores is an Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education, California State University, Stanislaus.
Vianney A. Gavilanes
Workshop: From Body to Word: Writing Through Play, Presence, and Possibility
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Vianney A. Gavilanes is an educator, creative facilitator, and writer with over a decade of experience leading transformative workshops across educational and community settings. She is the founder of Sentipensante Connections, an educational consulting practice that supports educators in implementing culturally sustaining, creative arts wellness spaces for Latina girls and women. She is also the creator and Program Director of Liberando Nuestras Voces, a creative writing program that nurtures self-expression, confidence, and well-being among middle school Latina students. Her facilitation draws from arts-based research and liberatory pedagogy to engage participants in holistic, embodied experiences. Whether working with young writers or adult educators, Vianney cultivates spaces rooted in joy, play, and collective imagination.
Geneffa Jahan
Workshop: Spill with Geneffa: Write What Overflows
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Born in London, England to East Indian parents from Tanzania and Uganda, Geneffa immigrated with her family to Canada at age 10, where she completed her schooling and attended university. Armed with two English degrees, she moved to California in 1998 and has taught English at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz since 2000. She has written and performed dramatic works and has curated cultural events at her college specifically for those from the MENA and South Asian diasporas. Since publishing her first collection, Spilling the Chai, she has focused on writing workshops that create an opening to spill our deeply-held secrets and vulnerable memories as a way of lightening the emotional burden that comes from holding them in. Assuming the Persian surname, Jahan, meaning “world,” she envisions a global movement where we all heal by spilling the chai.
Sara Santistevan
Workshop: Landscapes of Memory
Saturday, August 23rd, 2025
2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
Sara Santistevan is an emerging Latina poet. She received the 2021 Reyna Grande Scholarship, which gave her the resources to finish her chapbook, The Root from which Freedom Blossoms. She has work published in Shō Poetry Journal, The Acentos Review, Latin@ Literatures, Querencia Press, and elsewhere. She is also a reader, copyeditor, and occasional editorial writer for F(r)iction. In both her artistic and editorial work, Sara aims to build bridges between historical and personal narratives and amplify diverse voices in literature. Sara has lead generative poetry writing workshops with the Writers of Color of Santa Cruz County, Círculo de poetas & Writers, and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. She is honored to learn alongside anyone who takes her workshops.
Apeksha Harsh
Workshop: The Writers' Studio: Of the Earth
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm (PST)
A believer in the power of arts to initiate dialogue and transform learning, Apeksha Harsh designs and conducts programmes that foster creative learning. She has worked with the Warwick Writing Programme in Schools, Writing West Midlands, YMCA, including leading city schools & art galleries of Mumbai, India. She is Visiting Faculty for Storytelling & Creative Writing at the Somaiya School of Design and has been an international workshop leader at Círculo 2024 Summer Conference & On Writing for Young People: Leaf Conference 2024. Apeksha is also one of the anchors of Librarians of India, a community for library educators, dedicated to building a collaborative environment for sharing ideas, resources & promoting children’s literature. With an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick, Apeksha’s poetry and prose have appeared in UK & Australian publications and was also shortlisted for The Heroines Women’s Writing Prize 2024. As a storyteller, Apeksha has performed at various events, including Australian-based Word Travels’ Story Week 2020 & Gaatha Mumbai International Storytelling Festival 2024. Her professional website features her range of work and published writing: www.apekshaharsh.com
Erica Castro
Workshop: Dealing with Grief through Poetry
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm (PST)
Erica Castro is a Xicana English high school teacher who has taught for twenty-eight years. She has dedicated herself to publishing student work. She published two of the Oracle school anthologies, and she has published seven student individual books. She recently launched Daxson Publishing to publish marginalized voices: www.daxsonpublishing.com. She is leading two workshops on teaching poetry and narrative writing for her school district, and has taught other workshops on teaching English learners, as well.
Erica Castro has published two books that deal with grief: Finding Grief through the Grieving Process and The Pain Left Behind: Surviving a Suicide Loss.
Elizabeth Marino
Workshop: What Are You Brewing?
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm (PST)
Elizabeth Marino is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet based in Chicago, who has most recently led creative writing workshops at local branches of the Chicago Public Library. She developed and led a Creative Non-Fiction workshop under an Hispanic Serving Institution grant developed for Northeastern Illinois University, during her 11 years as an instructor there. She also led a SAGE workshop for LGBTQ seniors at The Center on Halsted for 4 years. Elizabeth's forthcoming work includes poems in 2 print anthologies: DEPOSE: an anthology of working class solidarity (Vagabond, Los Angeles) and Riders on the Storm (Revolutionary Poets Brigade, San Francisco). Other publications include her hybrid poetry/short memoir collection Asylum (Vagabond, 2020); chapbooks Debris (Puddin'head Press, Chicago) and Ceremonies (dancing girl press, Chicago), as well as over 25 print poetry contributions, litzines, and other small press journals.
Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo
Workshop: Overthrowing the Patriarchy
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm (PST)
Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo is a poet, visual artist, and facilitator whose work is informed by her Indigenous ancestry, Mesoamerican philosophy, Mexika & Mixtec art, Mexican culture, Chicano history, and her experiences as a woman. Elizabeth's new poemario, Breathe Liberación, brings the reader into a cultural meshwork of Xicana activism, poetry, art, and community on the page and in her voice. She revitalizes the language of our peoples. Her poetry is published widely in both print and online journals such as Somos en escrito and Harvard’s Palabritas, and in several anthologies including Nos pasamos de la raya. She has facilitated and presented at various colleges and universities. She earned a BFA in Pictorial Art and a BA in French from San José State University, served as Creative Ambassador of the San José Office of Cultural Affairs, received a Commendation from the City of San José, and was awarded a Creative Corps Initiative grant from the California Arts Council and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She serves as a Board Member of Poetry Center San José, and is the Founder and Editor of La Raíz Magazine. www.ejmontelongo.com/poetry
Adela Najarro
Workshop: "Disappearing Words"-Let's Make Art from the DEI Words Banned by the Trump Administration!
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm (PST)
Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. She serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latinx community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. She has published five poetry collections.
Her latest book, Variations in Blue, was selected by the Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Collaborative as the second volume in their curated series. The California Arts Council recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow. More information about Adela can be found at her website: www.adelanajarro.com.
Tisha Reichle-Aguilera
Workshop--How WE do: The Collective Voice in Fiction
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
10:30 am to 12:00 pm (PST)
Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is the author of the YA novel, Breaking Pattern (Inlandia Books), which received Honorable Mention for First Book of Fiction in English from the International Latino Book Awards, and a prose chapbook, Stories All Our Own(Bottlecap Press), a collection of stories about five cousins who are the same age every summer, their travesuras, and desire to escape gendered social conventions. One story from that collection was nominated for Best of the Net and another was spotlighted in Best Small Fictions 2022. Other stories have been anthologized and nominated for awards. As part of her socially engaged practice, she facilitated a Writing into Wellness workshop at Westchester Senior Center and led preschool teachers at Escuela de la Raza Unida in Blythe, CA through a monthly Storytelling and Narrative Writing workshop. With local high school students in person and online for college students, she offered seminars in food writing and the collective voice. She has also facilitated flash fiction workshops at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center and online. In addition to writing and teaching fiction, she writes poetry, essays, and plays. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit. Find her @writertish https://tishareichle.com/
Julie Calderon
Workshop--Sin Miedo: Sparking Horror and Dark Speculative Fiction
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm (PST)
The proud eldest daughter of Peruvian immigrants, Julie Calderón earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from UC Berkeley and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. She has worked as a high school English teacher and school principal for the past 29 years. She has been a grant recipient from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a member of Horror Writers Association and participated in the last two StokerCon conventions. When not writing fiction or reading horror, Julie is an Afro Brazilian dance enthusiast/performer alongside her teenage daughter. As a former creative writing teacher and current school principal, she has faciliated numerous writing and professional development workshops.
Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour
Workshop: El Ritmo de La Palabra
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm (PST)
Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour is a Filipino/French Creole Spoken Word Poet and Hip-Hop Artist from the Midwest now living in Santa Cruz. You can find him most weekends at Sacred Mud Henna and Tattoo Studio at The Tannery Arts Center offering workshops, coaching and henna & jagua hand art by appointment.
In Partnership with Rica Smith De La Luz, @sacredpoets, he hopes to inspire a creative message of peace and empowerment. A part of Mic Drop!, the monthly open mic at 418 Project, and a member of Writers of Color Santa Cruz County, he works to contribute to a strong community of Artists and Supporters locally and globally. Currently, he is developing a grant project in collaboration with CityArts and Arts Council Santa Cruz County called Poets on the Path - in efforts to revitalize the Santa Cruz San Lorenzo Riverwalk.
Jess Saravia/ Tzapotl Flores
Workshop: Accessing the Divine Through Personal Poetry
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm (PST)
Jess Saravia is a Two-Spirit Xicana y Latina multimedia artist that writes about spirituality, nature and death. She is a proud daughter of a single immigrant mother who initially sparked her love of writing and all things whimsical. Her work has been published in the first ILL Anthology, Synchronized Chaos online magazine, Fullerton College magazine and the Homies Who Submit zine with upcoming features in the Engendering U.S. Central American Women & Womxn’s Testimonios anthology and Those Who Think Differently: An Anthology of Stories of Indigenous Autistics from Turtle Island. When she is not writing, she is busy daydreaming, spending time with loved ones and organizing for her community. To follow her adventures, follow her Instagram: @tzapotl_flores (personal) and @tzapotl_lit (literary account).
Shizue Seigel
Workshop: Writing Our Rights
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm (PST)
Shizue Seigel is a San Francisco-based Japanese American whose poetry, prose and visual art draw from lived experience in segregated Baltimore, post-Occupation Japan, California farm labor camps, and Indian ashrams. A community-based writer for 30 years, she supports marginalized writers and artists through Write Now! SF Bay. Her nine books include a debut poetry collection Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talkand five Write Now! anthologies supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, and others. She was published most recently in Blue Mesa, Dreams+Memories, Journal X and Porter Gulch Review. The Write Now! monthly Zoom writing workshops offer safe, supportive spaces for writers of color to explore race, class, culture, gender and identity. They welcome all ages and all levels of writing, from new writers to seasoned professionals, working in any genre. For more information: www.WriteNowSF.com or
Laura Diaz Tovar
Workshop: Flor y Canto: Writing as Collective Medicine for Organizers, Artists, Healers
ONLINE! Saturday, August 30th, 2025
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm (PST)
Laura Diaz Tovar is a storyteller, teaching artist, and community worker rooted in San José, CA. She has been providing workshops to the community since 2006. As co-founder of the San Jose Colibri Collective since 2018, She has created and facilitated workshops that blend education, wellness, and cultura, centering on storytelling, trauma-informed practices, and community healing. Colibrí Collective’s goal is to utilize art as a tool for transformation, self-definition, and collective liberation, with a focus on cultural humility, conflict resolution, and creative expression.
As a public speaker and teaching artist, she has lead community-based poetry and art workshops that invite people to reconnect with their voice and wisdom. Her work is grounded in cultura cura—the belief that our cultural identities, stories, and traditions are essential to healing and resilience. She has had the honor of co-curating community altar exhibitions, including Domestic Violence Awareness (2022), Abuelitas as Healers (2023), and Solidarity: From Mexico to Palestine (2024), at the Mexican Heritage Plaza.
Through her artist residency at 6th Street Studios and Art Center, she explored themes of strength, empowerment, and collective healing through painting, writing, and embroidery.
She also facilitated hands-on cultural arts workshops, such as Hojalata (Mexican tin art) and Mexican amate painting, as well as collective poem-painting pieces that have been exhibited at community fundraisers and healing events.
