Bio & Project Information
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. Based in the Bay Area, she has served as a family case manager, domestic violence advocate, housing advocate, interpreter, translator, and community organizer. She has led poetry workshops at the Marin Academy Literary Festival and College of Alameda. In 2017, she co-wrote the play Fugue, celebrating LGBTQI history in the Mission. During the pandemic, she created the intergenerational writing workshop Paru-paru y Colibri with South of Market Community Action Network, funded by the SFAC grant. 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. Forthcoming in Mexico is her long verse poem I will kiss your mouth b/w the overgrown Milpa. Discover her latest poems in the Mexican journal Tierra Adentro & latest poetry film Las Marimacha Fragments made in collaboration with Filmmaker Peggy Peralta within 3rd Thing’s Press A Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time Based Disturbances. Lourdes celebrates your pocha marimachita tongue. A native of limbo nation, she continues to believe in your lung & your throat.
Lourdes will use The ReGen Artist fund for The Celebration of Queer Poetics Anthology Project, a poetry anthology and workshop series that reflects the diverse voices forming Bay Area Literary Landscape. The anthology will emerge from a six-week poetry workshop in the Mission District, focusing on Queer Poetics and will offer a tender space to explore and create poetry.