Small Press Traffic presents two nights of poetry, performance, and conversation with curator and host Javier O. Huerta.

Tonight’s features are Javier Zamora, Gladys Wangeci Gitau-Damaskos, Yosimar Reyes

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador, in 1990. His father fled El Salvador when he was a year old, and his mother when he was about to turn five. In 1999, Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores how immigration and the civil war have impacted his family. Zamora was a 2018–2019 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and holds fellowships from MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation (Ruth Lilly), Stanford University (Stegner), and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize, and the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. His memoir, SOLITO, will be published in September 2022 by Hogarth (PenguinRandomHouse).

Gladys Wangeci Gitau-Damaskos (she/ they) is a Kenyan-born writer, artist, designer, teacher, and activist from Lawrence, Massachusetts. As an artist, Wangeci lives by Audre Lorde’s words, “your silence will not protect you.” She is the author of poetry collections “there’s the truth then there are other things” (2019) and “im not allowed to explain (only foreshadow and reminisce)” (2021). Her writing and activism center around her experiences taking up space on American soil as an immigrant queer African femme. Gladys is the co-founder & prose editor at Exposed Brick Literary Magazine and an 8th grade ELA teacher. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Literary Arts from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Support their work at gladyswangeci.com.

Yosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed Poet and Public Speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of "13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World" and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of "10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know."