Latinx Hispanic Heritage Month and Third Annual LGBTQ+ History Month Potash Keynote: Ariana Brown and Alan Pelaez Lopez

Join the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the LGBTQ Resource Center for our joint LGBTQ+ History Month Potash Keynote and Latinx Hispanic Heritage Month Keynote, featuring poets Alan Pelaez Lopez and Ariana Brown.

This program entitled, “We Are Owed,” is part of the Fall 2021 tour, and in it poets, Alan Pelaez Lopez and Ariana Brown, explore the history of enslaved Black people in the U.S. and Mexico, loneliness and migration, while centering articulations, demands and visions of Black freedom in our contemporary moment. Named after Brown’s debut poetry collection, “We Are Owed,” it is an interactive artistic experience between both poets. Pelaez Lopez will share work from a manuscript-in-progress that envisions a Black future free of nation-states, and Brown will read from her debut collection committed to a Black consciousness that doesn’t leave anyone in the Americas behind. Intimate question and answer sessions will follow the readings.

Alan Pelaez Lopez

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,” “Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien,” and a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award. Follow their work online: @MigrantScribble.

Ariana Brown

Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from San Antonio, TX. She is the author of poetry collections “We Are Owed,” “Sana Sana,” and a 2014 National Collegiate Poetry Slam champion. Ariana’s work investigates queer Black personhood in Mexican American spaces, Black relationality and girlhood, loneliness and care. She has been writing, performing and teaching poetry for over 10 years. Follow her work online @ArianaThePoet.

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