Events this weekend featuring Juan Delgado, Carlos Cortes, and Dia de los Muertos! by Craig Svonkin

First, this year’s Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference will be bookended by sessions featuring Inland Empire creative writers. Taking place downtown at the Riverside Convention Center, three events will feature Inlandia authors:

Friday, October 31, 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm Inlandia Literary Laureate Juan Delgado will be presiding over a session of Inlandia poets titled “Creative Writing: Poetic Voices of Inlandia.” This will immediately be followed at 5:15 pm until 6:40 pm by a Creative Artist Spotlight Address by Delgado and Tom McGovern, co-authors of Vital Signs, a collection of poetry and photography about the Inland Empire, with book sales and signing until 7:00 pm.

Then, Sunday, November 2, from 10:45 am – 12:00 pm PAMLA will be offering a seminar, “Inlandia Institute: Celebrating and Memorializing Literary Inlandia,” hosted by Cati Porter and featuring Inlandia authors Laurel and Carlos Cortes (Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time). We will be discussing the value of ‘place’ in writing, and reading and talking about Inlandia.

These PAMLA sessions are open to the public, and all sessions are free to current UCR, RCC, CSUSB, Chaffey, La Sierra, and Cal Baptist students and faculty. For more information, please contact svonkin@netzero.net or visit the website for the full conference schedule: http://www.pamla.org/2014.

Also on Sunday, from 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm, please join us for an Open Mic with Juan Delgado at the Dia de los Muertos Festival at White Park, in the Gazebo, in honor of a loved one who’s passed. Read a poem (your own or another favorite) then place the poem on a joint altar. Attendance is free for the living and the dead.

Then, next Thursday November 6, at 7:00 pm please join us at the Riverside Public Library downtown, upstairs in the main auditorium, ArtsWalk for a reading and discussion with Tyler Stallings and his new book, Aridtopia.

Stay tuned – lots going on in November! More info coming soon.

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UPDATE: Addendum from the PAMLA Conference with complete details:

The Creative Artist Spotlight Address: Vital Signs with Juan Delgado and Thomas McGovern, will be on Friday, October 31, from 5:15 pm – 6:40 pm (in RCC Exhibit Hall C). Inlandia Literary Laureate, poet Juan Delgado, and award-winning photographer Thomas McGovern (both professors from California State University, San Bernardino), will speak about their collaboration on the beautiful and moving photography/poetry book, Vital Signs, about the Inland Empire region of Southern California, starting with the city of San Bernardino. The Before Columbus Foundation has selected Vital Signs as one of the recipients of the 2014 American Book Awards. Please join us for this special (and free to everyone) event. The Halloween Cash Bar (and Candy Feast) Reception will follow, with good conversation, light snacks, a cash bar, and a Halloween-themed film, all out doors (weather permitting). Feel free to wear a Halloween costume, if you’d like.

Riverside is an interesting place with an interesting history. If you’d like to learn more about the history and architecture of Riverside while getting to stretch your legs and get out of the Riverside Convention Center, please join one of the two Walking Tours of Historic Riverside conducted by Steve Lech, Riverside expert and President of the Riverside Historical Society. These tours (please wear comfortable shoes and be ready for a brisk pace) will leave the Riverside Convention Center on Friday at 2:00 pm and Saturday at 1:45 pm from the Lower Concourse (near the Registration table), and each tour will take 90 minutes.

Another opportunity to learn about Riverside and its culture and history, in connection to a variety of cultural, architectural and historical issues central to California and the West, will be the two back-to-back sessions about the Mission Inn, Riverside’s most famous architectural landmark (built in an eclectic “Mission Revival” style, and a fascinating place to explore (do be sure to visit the Mission Inn during the conference, even if you aren’t staying there). These sessions are titled “The Spirit of California Imprisoned: Summoning the Mission Inn,” and will be held on Friday, October 31, from 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm and then from 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm, in RCC Ballroom B.

As you are planning your PAMLA conference schedule, please take a look at some of our Creative Writing sessions and pencil one, two, or all of them into your conference schedule (of course, all of our scholarly writing is creative writing, but you know what we mean):

For example, on Friday, October 31, you could attend:

10:45 am–“Creative Writing: Poetry that May (or May Not) Change Your Life”

2:00 pm–“Creative Writing: Brief Poetry”

3:45 pm–“Creative Writing: Poetic Voices of Inlandia”

And then join us for the Creative Artist Spotlight Address, with local poet Juan Delgado and photographer Thomas McGovern, co-authors of Vital Signs, at 5:15 pm.

On Saturday, November 1, please join us for:

“Four SoCal Writers: Eric, Ara, Joseph, & Joseph” at 10:30 am.

“The Little Short Shorts: Narrative as Commentary,” at 3:30 pm, with songs and short creative fragments, including creative writing by me, PAMLA’s Executive Director, Craig Svonkin.

And then on Sunday, November 2, we will have a special session beginning at 10:45 am, co-sponsored by the Inlandia Institute, focusing on local writers featuring Carlos & Laurel Cortes, and Cati Porter.

The full conference program is up online: http://www.pamla.org/2014/schedule.

Literature Conference in Riverside by Isaac Williams

The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) is having its 2014 conference at the new Riverside Convention Center from Friday, October 31 until Sunday, November 2. Workshops are varied in focus and run the gamut from classical literature to new mediums, like webcomics. In addition, many workshops are based on literature’s connection with sociopolitical issues.

Registration for the conference at its regular price closes on September 10. Students from Riverside City College, La Sierra University, University of California, Riverside, Cal Baptist University, and Chaffey College can attend for free.

If you know of any other upcoming conferences or panels that are (relatively) local, please let us know!

Laura King

The Bathing Suit
1988

“Like this.” Across the poolhouse murk, hands float
a less-loved Body Glove, manhandle me,
and drift away. I stand between a bloat
of spandex and its riding burn, Kelly
Muirshin (B.F.F.) presiding with her cloak-
and-dagger look. “That’s how it goes, I swear,”
she hoaxes. Still the lacquered eye, the smoke-
and-mirrors eye that really glints (the glare
of sunlight on the pool reflected there),
the eye the face holds candidly, the way
magicians hold productive hats. Some pair
we two girls made—the fingers and the clay,
the hot wind and the wave, the weather and
the vane, the devil and the saint she trained.

Laura King’s childhood memories are backdropped by swimming pools in some of the sunniest places in the Southland, including Riverside, where her parents still live. Her poetry has appeared in 14 by 14, Goblin Fruit, Lucid Rhythms, and the 2013 Dwarf Stars anthology.

Jeff Mays

Pieces of the Ocean Are Floating in the Sky

The sun’s rays heat the top
of the ocean – its waves cresting

and falling, the krill bobbing
and swimming, the seaweed

sleepily drifting

Warmer and warmer it gets as the sun
seems to climb and presto

chango! it poofs into vapor,
causing the thin blue horizon to

shimmer, if you’re looking

The sweating vapor is released like a
balloon striving for the cooler

air to calm and condense it
back to water, tiny droplets that

are magnets of white fluff

Until windtraveled and seeping
with inky blue and grey

these chunks of ocean floating
in the sky finally succumb to gravity

and make their mad, foreseen dash for home

Lunch at Victoria Gardens

a man with a beard black
and grey sat on a bench under

a sheet of shadow and light, his
dark jacket keeping him warm,

his folded card-table legs propping
up an opened book, his disinterested arm

holding up an apple, its orange-red
variegated skin like an ornament

and behind the bench the boxwoods ran
their green around a sycamore which

was all reflected in a storefront window,
the glass glinting silently as a shop-

woman, young and full of possibility,
stooped like a simple calligraphy

rearranging the props and wares, as if
Edward Hopper hadn’t been here

a hundred times before

_____

In addition to being published by the Inlandia Journal, The Pacific Review, and The Sand Canyon Review, Jeff Mays is considering joining an indie rock band to write lyrics for in order to find an audience for his written work.