Blanton New Grounds: Grand Opening Celebration, May 13, 2023
Torch Literary Arts joins the Blanton Museum of Art for the grand opening of the new outdoor Moody Patio & Grounds.
Enjoy live music and remarks by special guests on the new Moody Patio, an art experience designed by the Haas Brothers, plus explore the new art, architecture, and gardens throughout the grounds. Self-guided family activities will also be available. The event will also kick off our new operating hours, which include staying open till 8 p.m. on Saturdays.
4 - 5 pm: Torch will curate a reading by Texas writers in the museum’s Meredith Lounge on the second floor. Limited seating; first come, first served.
Click here for ticket information and to RSVP to attend.
Featuring

Originally from South Central Los Angeles,
Eva Margarita is an Afro-Latinx performance artist and scholar. Her performance works explore ritual and grief while her critical writings explore race and the census. As an artist, Eva Margarita is concerned with grief and wake work that allows us to accompany, blur lines, and spill all over each other. Her work is guided by the principle that the rituals of everyday life offer a way of existing that acknowledges familial, scholarly, and spiritual methods of becoming. She is currently a Phd Candidate at UT Austin and a Board Director at The VORTEX Repertory.

jo reyes-boitel is a poet, playwright, and scholar, queer mixed Latinx, and parent now working on their MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, where they also serve as a teaching assistant. Their publications include Michael + Josephine (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and the chapbook mouth (Neon Hemlock, 2021). Playing with fire, their book of poetry centered on their upbringing, is forthcoming from Next Page Press in November 2023.

Icess Fernandez is an educator, writer, podcaster, and former journalist. She is a
graduate of Goddard College’s MFA program and the University of Houston. Her work has been internationally published in Queen Mobs Lit Journal, Poetry 24, Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective’s
anthology Notes from Humanity. Her Houston-based story, “Happy Hunting”, was recently published in the Houston Noir anthology. Her podcast, Dear Reader, is based on the popular blog of the same name. Her nonfiction/memoir work has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost, and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, a Dos Brujas Workshop alum, and a Kimbilio Fellow. She’s currently working on her first novel and finishing her memoir, Problematic.

Jennine “DOC” Krueger is a mother, writer, artivist, public speaker, and educator in Austin, Texas. She has competed in world, national, and local slam poetry competitions. She holds four titles including being a member of the Killeen Poetry Slam which placed 2nd overall in the nation in 2012 and Neo Soul Poetry Slam placing 1st in group piece finals in 2013. Jennine was the 2015 season slam champ for Austin’s Neo Soul and has now coached several national teams for Austin Poetry Slam. Her poetry and dramatic works have been published in Santa Fe Literary Review, and the Sierra Nevada Review as a winner in the Brian Turner Literary Arts Prize, and her dramatic work has won Best of Fest five times in Austin’s Frontera Festival. She is now a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of English at Huston-Tillotson University with an M.Ed. from Concordia University and an MFA in poetry from Spalding University. Her current role at HT is the Inaugural Presidential Fellow for Student Engagement and Retention and she is an Emerging Teaching Artist Fellow through Mindpop and the City of Austin. Her scholarship has led her to discuss culture and comics at the National Pop Culture Conference, Wizard World’s Comic Con, virtually in the 2020 SXSWEdu conference on Teaching for Social Justice with Comics, and The Cosplay Poetry Slam at SanJapan 2021 in San Antonio Texas. Her writing has a vast range across politics, race and identity as well as across genres with children’s literature and a hip-hop musical retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (currently in development through Theatre Now New York’s National Musical Lab). Her research interests are in spoken word performance, medieval literature translations into hip-hop, social and restorative justice, and marginalized heroes in comic books and graphic novels. She is developing an anime screenplay pilot Ars Poetica that focuses on poetry and mental health.
Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. TORCH has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.