Performance: Poetry & Music with KALW

We partner  with KALW for an evening poetry and music featuring Josiah Luis Alderete, James Cagney, soledadconcarne, Sara Borjas and percussion music by PC Munoz.

Josiah Luis Alderete is a co-fouder of Medicine For Nightmares Bookstore and Gallery, a full-blooded Pocho, spanglish speaking poeta who first learned how to write poesía in the kitchen of his Mama’s Mexican restaurant. He was one of the founding members of  Bay Area outspoken word group The Molotov Mouths, and is the curator and host of the long-running monthly Chicano/Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl. His book of poety Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos published by Black Freighter Press.

James Cagney, a poet and author, won the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles Award for his collection Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2018). His second collection, Martian: The Saint Of Loneliness, (Nomadic Press) received the 2021 James Laughlin Award. 

soledadconcarne is a casually queer, intergalactic Oakland/Ohlone-based chicanx punk poet working/poor multiple high school drop-out bookstore lackey, San Fernando Valley parking lot cryptid, and blatant smoker sharing-trauma-with-their-mother.

Sara Borjas is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award and she was featured as one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Ragdale, CantoMundo, The Poetry Foundation, Sewanee Writers Conference, Postgraduate Writers Conference and Community of Writers. She believes that all Black lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized. She teaches at California State University, East Bay and stays rooted in Fresno. 

PC Muñoz's diverse music-making aesthetic, spanning composition, percussion, recording artistry, and production, seamlessly integrates songcraft, musique concrète, free jazz, and the infectious rhythms of funk and hip-hop. Muñoz's 2023 releases include a live EP with Red Fast Luck (a duo with multi-reed artist David Boyce) and a solo recording titled Legacy, accompanied by a limited-edition art card designed by Jerilyn Guerrero. The live EP is featured on the San Francisco Public Library's curated streaming service, Bay Beats. Additionally, there's anticipation for a Red Fast Luck studio album set to be released in early 2024.