Join out of town Gothic writers Colton Cuca Campbell, Elvira and Carrizal-Dukes, with locals M.M. Olivas and Scott Russell Duncan as they explore the mind-breaking darkness of the stone cold Xicanx experience.
Colton Cuca Campbell is a PhD student in Chicana/o Studies at the University of New Mexico. His interdisciplinary research and creative work explore Xicanxfuturisms, nuclear colonialism, liberation, resistance, memory, and monstrosity. He has published fiction, poetry, visual art, and academic research in Somos en Escrito, Conceptions Southwest, The Bilingual Review, Regeneración, and Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow. As both an educator and writer, his work centers narrative as a method of decolonial inquiry, blending critical theory with speculative storytelling and visual culture.
Elvira Carrizal-Dukes, Ph.D., M.F.A., is a Xicana educator, writer, graphic novelist, filmmaker, and community arts leader from the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. She is the CEO, writer, and Editor-in-Chief of DUKEScomics LLC, an award-winning bilingual and multicultural publishing company.
Scótt Russell Dúncan, a Xicano writer, edited the first Chicano sci-fi anthology, El Porvenir, ¡Ya!: Citlalzazanilli Mexicatl and is creator and editor of the Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow codex. He is director of Palabras del Pueblo writing workshop and co-creator of Maíz Poppin' Press. His novel, Old California Strikes Back, a magic memoir and meta-novel described as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Yo Soy Joaquin, is published through FlowerSong Press. www.scottrussellduncan.com
M.M. Olivas is an alumna of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop and the 2023 Under the Volcano Writers Residency. Her short fiction has appeared in several publications, including Uncanny Magazine, Weird Horror Magazine, Apex, and Bourbon Penn. Olivas explores the intersection of queer and diasporic experiences in her fiction. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning her MFA in Creative Writing at San Jose State University and collecting transforming robots.
Olivas’s debut novel, Sundown in San Ojuela, is a gothic spaghetti western that follows Aztec Vampires in California’s Inland Empire and is published by Lanternfish Press.