!Speaking Axolotl, La Area Bahia’s long running monthly Latinx reading series, is over la luna excited to be hosting a celebration for Paul Flores’ new libro of poesia “We Still Be”!
Paul Flores will be performing works from his new libro(published in 2023 by El Martillo Press) Accompanied by Jon Jang on piano, Gary Brown on double bass and Deszon Clairborne. Special guest poet Matt Sedillo. Hosted by Norman Zelaya.
This event will feature a 5 slot open mic that will open the show.
Paul S. Flores is one of the most influential Latino performance artists in the country and a nationally respected youth arts educator. He creates plays, oral narratives, and spoken word works about transnationality and citizenship that spur and support societal movements that lead to change.
Flores' work has played all across the United States and internationally in Cuba, Mexico, and El Salvador. His commissions have come from the California Arts Council, Creative Capital, La Peña Cultural Center, MACLA, MAP Fund, Pregones Theater, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, National Performance Network Creation Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Creative Work Fund, Hewlett and Gerbode Foundation, Youth Speaks, the San Francisco International Arts Festival, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts among many others. Flores is also known for playing professional baseball for the Chicago Cubs before moving to San Francisco and becoming co-founder of the Latino poetry performance group Los Delicados, as well as co-founder of Youth Speaks/Brave New Voices: National Teen Poetry Slam, an HBO Def Poetry Slam poet, a PEN award-winning novelist, and a 2015 Doris Duke Artist.
Flores’ ability to paint a vivid picture of the bi-cultural Latino experience is shaped by his personal background and experience growing up in Chula Vista, California, near the Mexican border. His full body of work touches on the immigrant story in all its complexities: from the violent—forced migration, gang life, war, incarceration, and separated families—to zooming in on intergenerational relationships and the struggle of preserving important cultural values. As a San Francisco artist of Mexican and Cuban-American heritage, Paul S. Flores has built a national reputation for interview-based theater. He integrates Latino and indigenous healing practices to tell the stories of real people impacted by immigration and systemic inequalities. From “Along the Border Lies,” “Brown Dreams,” to “Representa!,” “YOU’RE GONNA CRY,” “PLACAS,” “ON THE HILL: I AM ALEX NIETO,” to “We Have Iré,” his most recent play, Flores dives deep into these themes.
“We Have Iré” explores the real lives of Afro-Cuban and Cuban-American transnational artists living in the United States, and their influence on and experience with American culture. “On The Hill: I Am Alex Nieto” brought San Francisco communities together divided by gentrification and police violence. “PLACAS: The Most Dangerous Tattoo” was based on testimonies of members of MS-13 in California barrios as they attempted to rebuild their lives through laser tattoo removal and therapy. “YOU’RE GONNA CRY” documents the demographic shift of The Mission District after the "dot-com" boom. “Representa!,” chronicles what happens when Chicano spoken word poet Flores and Cuban rapper Julio Cardenas meet in Cuba at the Havana Hip-Hop Festival.
Flores moved to San Francisco in 1995. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego; and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He teaches Hip-Hop Theater and Spoken Word at USF, San Francisco State University, and the Prison Arts Project at California Medical Facility in Vacaville State Prison. He lives in San Francisco with his children.
Matt Sedillo has been described as the "best political poet in America" as well as "the poet laureate of the struggle" by academics, poets, and journalists alike. He has appeared on CSPAN and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He has spoken at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba, at numerous conferences and forums such as the National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education, and at over a hundred universities and colleges, including the University of Cambridge, among many others. He is the current literary director of the dA Center for the Arts and author of Mowing Leaves of Grass (Flowersong Press, 2019), which is currently being taught at California State University at Northridge and Monterey Bay, as well as at Mission College. His Three Act Poem structure has been taught as capstones of coursework at UCLA and Occidental College. His next poetry collection, City on the Second Floor, was published January 2021. Born in El Sereno, California in 1981, Matt Sedillo writes from the vantage point of a second generation Chicano born in an era of diminishing opportunities and a crumbling economy. His writing - a fearless, challenging and at times even confrontational blend of humor, history and political theory - is a reflection of those realities. The poetry of Matt Sedillo is in turn a shot in the arm of pure revolutionary adrenaline and at others a sobering call for the fundamental restructuring of society in the interest of people not profits. Passionate, analytical, humorous and above all sincere, a revolutionary poet fortunate enough to be living in interesting times, the artistry of Matt Sedillo is a clarion call for all those who know a new world is not only possible but inevitable.