September 2014: Natalia Treviño, author of Lavando La Dirty Laundry, published by Mongrel Empire Press
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About the Book:
Lavando La Dirty Laundry
By Natalia Treviño
Published by Mongrel Empire Press
ISBN-13: 978-0985133757
As described by poet Wendy Barker, “the poems of Lavando la Dirty Laundry give us the stories of wives, from abuelas and tías in Mexico, figures from Greek epics and the New Testament, as well as from the contemporary narrator who speaks of the sourness of a former marriage and the sweet nourishment of a new one that joins two cultures from opposite sides of the globe.”
Sandra Cisneros, author of House on Mango Street and a MacArthur Fellow, praises Lavando la Dirty Laundry, saying, “It is on the white sheets of this book that a woman’s most private confessions are transformed from dirty laundry to poetry luminescent as linen on the line.”
National Book Award-winning poet Allison Adelle Hedge Coke declares, “Treviño solidly delivers in her debut presentation, an admirable poetic; a knowing we all need, must read.”
According to San Antonio poet laureate Carmen Tafolla, “This exquisite collection of poems enchants and exposes, drawing the reader into its center surely, passionately, and as fiercely as a wildfire.”
”These are not safe poems,” says New Mexico Centennial Poet Laureate Levi Romero, “They do not have a safety net or a forewarning and they recall what some would rather forget. They are lessons in the comfort and healing that comes through sharing and telling.”
About the Author:
Natalia Treviño
Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change. She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs.
Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration.
She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.