2023 Texas State Poet Laureate ire’ne lara silva will be leading a very special afternoon writing workshop today in our galeria. Poets don’t miss this oppurtunity to take a workshop with one of our most gifted poets and chingona educators around.

Gritos; On Finding the Source of Our Voices…

We will be using gritos as a way of finding our own deeper personel voice, to ground the creative mind in our bodies, to root the voice in our hearts, and to both release and control emotions in the body and the voice.. There will be various visualization exercises, a lot of playing with physical stances, a great deal of sound making experimentation, and a few short writing/art prompts to examine how we perceive our voices. No experience or familiarity with gritos is needed.

Registration fee; $100

To register email; irenelarasilva@yahoo.com

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, which one Gold for the 2025 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book/International Latino Book Awards, two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos, a comic book, VENDAVAL, and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of the 2026 Jessie H. Jones, Fellowship, the 2025 Poetry Rising Star Award (ILBA), a 2025 Storyknife Writers Residency, the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Her second short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Spring 2026. http://www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com