Small Press Traffic presents two nights of poetry, performance, and conversation with curator and host Javier O. Huerta.
Tonight’s features are Jennif(f)er Tamayo, Aline Mello, Alan Pelaez Lopez.
Jennif(f)er Tamayo (they/them) is a poet, performer, and educator. As a formerly detained undocumented migrant, their writing and performance reimagines and queers cultural narratives about “illegal migration” and belonging. They are the author of the visual art and poetry collections [Red Missed Aches, Read Mistakes, Red Mistakes, Read Missed Aches] (2011), YOU DA ONE (2017) and to kill the future in the present (2018). JT has received fellowships from the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, The Arts Research Center, Hemispheric Institute, and CantoMundo. Their work has been staged at The Brooklyn Museum, BAMPFA, Midtown Arts & Theatre Center Houston, and La Mama Theatre among others. JT currently lives on Saponi, Occaneechi Saponi, Eno and Shakori territories (sections of the Triad region of North Carolina) where they are building a school with their partner, family and doggies.
Aline Mello was born in Brazil and immigrated to the US with her family in 1997. Her debut collection MORE SALT THAN DIAMOND was published in March 2022. Her work often centers around themes of identity, religion, the body, family, and the experience of the self living in diaspora. Her immigrant and undocumented identity have influenced her writing and her art. She is an Undocupoet fellow, and her writing can be found in journals such as the Georgia Review, Quarterly West, Indiana Review, and The Rumpus. She is currently a poetry MFA student at The Ohio State University. Visit her on social media at @thealinemello and at www.thealinemello.com.
Alan Pelaez Lopez is a poet, essayist, and a cultural critic trained in multimedia writing. Their poetry investigates the realities of undocumented migrants in the United States, Black futures, and the complex kinship practices that transgender and nonbinary people build to speak back to power. They are the author of to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020) and Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien (The Operating System 2020), a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award. Follow their work online: @MigrantScribble.