Lunada Literary Lounge
December 4 @ 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Save the date for Lunada Literary Lounge! 🌕
Join Galería de la Raza on Thursday, December 4 at Studio 24 to close out the last Lunada Literary Lounge of 2025! Returning to host and curate our Fall lineup is Mission homeboy and writer Norman Zelaya.
Galería is excited to close this season of Lunada Literary Lounge by spotlighting a special literary project, Speaking in tongues/ Hablando en lenguas.
Speaking in tongues/ Hablando en lenguas emerged in April of 2023 as a literary journey, wherein Mexican and Chicanx poets embarked on a tour of five Mexican cities: Monterrey, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, León and Mexico City. Speaking in tongues/ Hablando en lenguas is now presented as a collection of four books that integrate duos of Mexican and Chicanx poets, who all move between Spanish, English and Spanglish. These three languages and their speeches declare and manifest themselves on all sides of the Mexico-US border. These eight poetics coincide in themes of migration, land, border, language, politics, love, and more.
Featuring Aideed Medina, hector son of hector, Josiah Luis Alderete, and Lourdes Figueroa, these poets will bring their contributions to this literary project to share with Lunada audience.
Open Mic is available on a first come first serve basis, sign ups will be at the door. Don’t be shy and share your work.
Free admission.
ABOUT THE FEATURES
Aideed Medina is Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, award-winning spoken word artist and playwright, and is the author of 31 Hummingbird: A Suite of Poems (Editorial Xingao, 2023) and Segmented Bodies (Prickly Pear Press, 2024). Her poetry and prose have been featured in many publications, including Fresno State’s Club Austral Literary Magazine, Chicano Writers and Artists Association Journal, La Bloga, Poets Responding, Split This Rock, and Nueva York Poetry Review, among many others, as well as in compositions for the 559 Mural Project and Fresno Grand Opera’s Opera Remix. She is the 2025-2027 Fresno Poet Laureate.
hector son of hector is from Long Beach, CA and currently lives in Oakland. He is the child of Mexican immigrants, works in a hospital, dreams of short stories and writes poetry in secret.
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho spanglish speaking poeta who has been an active part of La Area Bahia’s Spoken Word scene for over twenty years. He was one of the founding members of outspoken word group The Molotov Mouths and is the curator and host of the long running monthly Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl. His book of poems “Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos” was published in 2021 by Black Freighter Press. Currently he tends the 24th street portal as one of the owners of Medicine For Nightmares Bookstore & Galeria and resides in North Richmond where he is waiting for Quetzalquatl to arrive.
Lourdes Figueroa is a queer chicanx oral poet & an award winning poetry filmmaker whose work reflects her family’s experiences in el azadón— tilling the soil under the sun, in Yolo County. Lourdes is the author of the chapbooks yolotl, Ruidos = To Learn Speak, and Vuelta (Nomadic Press). Her poem Pieces from yolotl was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022 by Quite Lightning. She is a recipient of Nomadic Press Bay Area Literature Award for Poetry. Lourdes celebrates your pocha marimachita tongue. A native of limbo nation, she continues to believe in your lung & your throat.
