Join us for the launch of All We Are Told Not to Touch, Leticia Del Toro’s debut chapbook from Finishing Line Press. ALL WE ARE TOLD NOT TO TOUCH explores the places and moments where we are told danger exists:  the rogue waves of the ocean, the unwelcoming side of a border, a street where girls are forbidden to play and the implacable grief surrounding a brother’s death, among others. Each poem unfolds with a desire for what is out of reach.  The poet’s travels and meditations come to life in both urban and rural spaces such as San Francisco, Paris, Barcelona, as well as in villages in France and Mexico. All are interconnected points of the spiritual, physical and sensual journeys required to love and heal.

Leticia will read from the collection and will be in conversation with Norma Liliana Valdez, founder of the Xingona Collective. Guest poet, Yaccaira Salvatierra will also grace the evening with her poems. We will kick off the evening with a musical offering from singer and jarana player, Maria de la Rosa.

 Leticia Del Toro is a Chicana poet and fiction writer from the sugar refinery town of Crockett, California with roots in Jalisco, Mexico. She has published short stories and essays in Huizache, Zyzzyva, About Place Journal and more. Her fiction chapbook, Café Colima, was published as the 2017 Kore Press Fiction Prize.  Additional awards include a Hedgebrook residency, a Rona Jaffe Award at Bread Loaf and a Story Knife residency. Leticia has also thrived at the VONA and Macondo conferences. Her debut poetry chapbook, All We Are Told Not to Touch, is available from Finishing Line Press. Her work centers themes of addiction, cross-cultural conflict and resistance to patriarchy. Aside from writing and arts activism, Leticia considers teaching and mothering among her most creative work.

 Norma Liliana Valdez is the author of the chapbook Preparing the Body (YesYes Books, 2019)

Yaccaira Salvatierra’s poems have appeared in Huizache, Kweli, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle among others. Her honors include the Dorrit Sibley Award for achievement in Poetry, the 2015 recipient of the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize, the Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholarship as a fellow at the Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw Valley, a scholarship recipient for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, a fellow at VONA, and a recipient of a residency at Hedgebrook. She has been a finalist of various awards such as the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets and the Lit Fest Emerging Writer Fellowship in poetry. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. She is an educator and is currently working on her first collection of poems.

María de la Rosa (from SanJose, CA) has studied and collaborated with masters of Mexican dance/music; performed nationally and in Mexico; and received national recognition developing works that reflect her heritage and promote visionary re-considerations of artistic cultural traditions.