10:00-11:00 a.m., Class Presentation SE I Room 101
11:20 a.m.-12:20 p.m., Class Presentation DBH 1200
1:00-2:30 p.m., Reception and Book Signing SBSG 1517

Please RSVP by: November 3, 2016 http://cls.soceco.uci.edu/webforms/rsvp-illuminations-maya-chinchilla-book-signing

“The Cha Cha Files: Poetry and Conversation with Maya Chinchilla” will expose our undergraduates to the work of this amazing new poet while also encouraging undergraduates to explore their own identities, histories, and justice struggles through narrative and poetry. Her visit to UC Irvine will include a public reading and talk, focused on her book, The Cha Cha Files, as well as an open conversation with UCI undergraduates about the themes that her work addresses, and about her own writing and creative process.

Maya Chinchilla is a Guatemalan, Bay Area-based writer, video artist, educator and author of “The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética” and coeditor of co-editor of “Desde El Epicentro: An anthology of Central American Poetry and Art.” Maya received her MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College and her undergraduate degree from University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also founded and co-edited the annual publication, La Revista. She writes and performs poetry that explores themes of historical memory, heartbreak, tenderness, sexuality, and alternative futures. Her work draws on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the wounds we carry.