Schedule of Events

October 24, 2026, Ozuna Library, Palo Alto College, San Antonio, TX.

8:30 -  9:30 am

Welcome to BiblioTejas Writers Conference with Coffee & Pastries

Legacy Room

Attendees who have registered in advance, or who

have yet to register, may do so at our registration area

located to the right upon entering Ozuna Library.

Inside the Legacy Room, coffee, water, and pastries will

be provided as well as a welcome message.

9:30 -  11 am

Legacy Room

Welcome with Coffee & Pastries

Open

Classroom 102

Panel: “Building Bridges Through Zines and Comics: Multimodal Storytelling as Resistance”

(Yvonne Samuels, Viridiana Gomez, and Marilyn Garcia)
This panel demonstrates resistance to the exclusive ethos of academia in dismantling the patriarchal “elite” form of knowledge that often dismisses storytelling through the artform of zine and comics.  Within each other’s testimonios, illustrations, poetry, and creative writing are works of activism across time and space.

Classroom 117

Poetry and Coffee with Gemini Ink

(Alexandra Van de Kamp)

Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

Workshop: “Listening Inward/Reaching Outward”

(Sarah Joy Thompson)

In this generative writing workshop, the focus is looking at the body as a story keeper and holding space for the narratives we carry. Taking time to listen to our own personal narrative helps with integrating our inner lives with how we show up in the world. 

11:15 am -  12:45 pm

Legacy Room

Reading: “Flower and Song in South Texas: A Reading with FlowerSong Press”

(Edward Vidaurre, Paola Carrasco, Celina A. Gomez, Rodney Gomez, and Luisa Vidaurre)

FlowerSong is an independent press rooted in the Rio Grande Valley (TX) that amplifies voices from the borderlands and across the Americas. In this context, the reading functions not just as a performance of texts but as a community-centered literary gathering. FlowerSong events often emphasize inclusivity, dialogue, and the sharing of “essential voices,” creating spaces where writers and audiences engage in collective reflection and cultural affirmation.  The thematic throughline centers on borderlands identity, cultural memory, and the blending of languages and traditions.

Classroom 102

Panel: “Discussing the Art of Fiction and Publishing your first Novel.”

(Rafael C. Castillo, Natalia Treviño, and Ben Longoria)
From the inspired spark to struggles and setbacks to a finished manuscript, this panel sees three writers answering questions and providing information on the writers’ process and the production of one’s novel. Giving a glimpse on the work and steps along the way, this panel is for aspiring writers of all levels. This panel will also have a q & a. 

Classroom 117

Workshop: “Water Dreaming: Grief, Repression, and Radical Hope, Writing eco-memoria for uncertain times”

(Anel Flores)

Rivers are dying and being policed in the same breath — waters silenced, disappeared, the way so much else has been made to vanish. This workshop holds space for environmental grief alongside the grief of repression without collapsing into despair. Inspired by Ecomemoria, we come here to realize our connection to the work of memory and justice, one story at a time: we will circle up, work on our body-vault writing, a short reading from Curtains of Rain, writing eco-memoria toward radical hope — a piece of praise or witness for a body of water, or a piece that answers grief with resistance. Each word, in the name of all who have suffered atrocities.

Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

Workshop: “Teen Writing Circle with Gemini Ink”

(Gemini Ink)

12:45 pm -  1:30 pm (Break)

1:30 pm -  2:45 pm

Legacy Room

Reading: “Where the Poem Lives”

(Tiana Clark, Carrie Fountain, Charlotte Pence, and Bianca Alyssa Pérez)

Where the Poem Lives celebrates Texas State University’s MFA in Creative Writing by gathering four poets who are part of the TXST community: Carrie Fountain, former Texas Poet Laureate and literary curator of The Wittliff Collections; Tiana Clark, Visiting Professor and National Book Award finalist; Charlotte Pence, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and MFA Director; and Bianca Alyssa Pérez, MFA program coordinator and Austin Youth Poet Laureate program mentor.

Classroom 102

Panel: “Music, lyrics, and poetry: a conversation and reading”

(Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson & Mandy Lynn)
Mandy Lynn and Andrea Vocab Sanderson are two interdisciplinary artists whose usage of musicianship, song composition, and performance poetry have taken them to stages and classrooms across the nation. In this hybrid panel/reading/discussion, they will share music and verse, discussing how music and poetry inform and inspire one another in their personal art.

Classroom 117

Workshop: “A Poetics of Self-Negation”

(Ed O’Casey & Jonathan Fletcher)

This workshop focuses on using the Apophatic Mode in the poetry of Self. In the Apophatic Mode, a poet explores what the Self isn’t: the art of illumination through negation, rather than trying to conjure the Self/Subject through direct description, comparison, or metaphor. The act of negation brings both extremes of the Other/Self duality into the conversation. To make up for the deficiencies of language, Apophatic Poetics employs absence, moving past metaphor to a broader experience of Self.

Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

Panel: “Veteran Writing Collective”

(Gemini Ink)

3 pm -  4:30 pm

Legacy Room

Reading w/ Ito Romo

(Ito Romo)

Classroom 102

Panel/Reading: “The Kitchen Table is a Starship: a discussion and reading on Latinx Futurism”

(C. Rooster Martinez)

Considering eco-poetics, apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic and speculative poetics, this panel/reading discusses with Latinx Futurism as well as a reading of Rooster Martinez’s latest collection of poems The Kitchen Table is a Starship.

Classroom 117

Workshop: “Inclusive Narratives: Visivial Poética: Translanguaging as Creative Praxis”

(Alejandra “Mera Mera” Sánchez Alanís)

Visivial Poética: Translanguaging as Creative Praxis, invites participants into an immersive exploration of language as a fluid, embodied, and liberatory act. Rooted in bilingual and translingual practices, the session centers the ways writers, artists, and thinkers move between languages—not as limitation, but as expansion—activating memory, identity, and cultural inheritance through creative expression. The workshop will examine translanguaging as both a pedagogical tool and an artistic strategy, emphasizing its role in dismantling rigid linguistic hierarchies and honoring lived, hybrid realities.

Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

Panel: “Friends of Dorothy”: PRIDE in Plain Sight

(Chibbi, Mecca Miles, Gume Laurell III, Diamond Braxton, Cloud Cardona, & Aureleo Sans)

4:45 pm -  6:15 pm

Legacy Room

Reading: Last Writes Reading

(Gerard Robledo, Josh Robbins, Richard Boada, Diamond Braxton, Miranda Ramirez, & Laurie Ann Guerrero)

The Last Writes Reading is a monthly literary and open mic series curated by Gerard Robledo (author of My Mother the Butcher). This reading will feature: Gerard Robledo, Josh Robbins, Richard Boada, Diamond Braxton, Miranda Ramirez, & Laurie Ann Guerrero.

Classroom 102

Panel/Reading/Q&A: “Consider the Concha: A Reading & Discussion on Chicanx Iconography”

(Cloud Delfina Cardona, Bianca Alyssa Pérez, Dee Lalo Garcia, and Saúl Hernández)
There is a long legacy of writers drawing from the Chicanx collective pot of images, such as loteria cards, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and pan dulce, to name a few. These debut Chicanx writers engage with these images through their work, whether it's through complicating these icons or adding to their legacy. Dee Lalo Garcia, Bianca Alyssa Pérez, and Saúl Hernández will read from their own work and then engage in a discussion about their own relationship to these motifs, the complexities of Chicanx iconography, and what they would like to see in the future of Chicanx literature.

Classroom 117

Workshop: BiblioTejas Small Book Fair

BiblioTejas opens a small book fair for authors and panelists from the conference. 

Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

Panel: SA Poetry Archive Presentation

(Sara Schmidt)

6:30 pm -  8 pm

Legacy Room

Reading & Discussion: Emmy Pérez

(Emmy Pérez & Rooster Martinez)