About the Participants.  

Nohora Arrieta Fernández is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA’s Department of Spanish & Portuguese. She received her Ph.D. in Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies from Georgetown University in 2021. Her current research focuses on art history, visual studies, the history of commodities, and the intellectual traditions of the African Diaspora in the Americas. She has published essays and articles on Latin American literature and visual arts, comics, and the Afro-Latin American Diaspora, and is a collaborator of art magazines as Artishock and Contemporyand. She recently co-edited Transition. The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora, 130. Her first co-translation project, Semantic of the World, the Poetry of Romulo Bustos, will be published by New Mexico Press (2022).

Sonia Guiñansaca is an international award winning queer migrant poet, cultural organizer and social justice activist. They emerged as a national leader in the migrant artistic and political communities where they coordinated and participated in groundbreaking civil disobedience actions. Guiñansaca helped build some of the largest undocumented organizations in the US, including co-founding some of the first artistic projects by and for undocumented writers and artists. Sonia has worked for over a decade in both policy and cultural efforts building equitable infrastructures for migrant artists. They have been awarded residencies and fellowships from Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, Poetry Foundation, British Council, Creative Time, and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics. Guiñansaca has performed at the Met, the NYC Public Theater, Lehmann Maupin Gallery and has been featured on PEN American, Interview Magazine, Ms.Magazine, Teen Vogue, Diva Magazine UK, CNN, NBC, and PBS to name a few. Their migration and cultural equity work has also taken them to London and Mexico City to advise on migrant policy and arts programming. Consults for national social justice organizations, cultural institutions, and foundations on artists convening, cultural activations, and civic engagement. Past clients include: Fwd.us, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and The Rasmuson Foundation. Sonia self-published their debut mini chapbook Nostalgia and Borders in 2016. They are a contributor for the new edition of ColonizeThis! Anthology (2019 Seal Press), and featured on Stop Telling Women to Smile (2020 Seal Press). In 2022, Guiñansaca is releasing their second chapbook #PapiFemme and launching House of Alegría, a multi-fold creative project supporting emerging undocumented Queer/Trans/Non-binary artists. Now, represented by Writers House Agency , Sonia is also working on their first memoir, and co-editing the forthcoming anthology Somewhere We Are Human (HarperCollins 2022).