A Conversation with Blas Falconer

A Conversation with Blas Falconer

Listen in on an oral history conversation with poet Blas Falconer, interviewed by Notre Dame’s Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Marisel Moreno, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Discover Falconer’s artistic journey from the idyllic Eden of his childhood and the unexpected opportunities of a broken ankle to how he keeps writing and parenting in balance and how teaching feeds a deep appreciation for the work of poetry that becomes a source of inspiration and purpose

Experience the Episode

Presented by Institute for Latino Studies

Thursday, December 12, 2024 12:00 pm

Listen in on an oral history conversation with poet Blas Falconer, interviewed by Notre Dame’s Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Marisel Moreno, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Discover Falconer’s artistic journey from the idyllic Eden of his childhood and the unexpected opportunities of a broken ankle to how he keeps writing and parenting in balance and how teaching feeds a deep appreciation for the work of poetry that becomes a source of inspiration and purpose.

This conversation was recorded in October 2013. For more information, please visit the Letras Latinas website.

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Meet the Poet: Blas Falconer

Blas Falconer is the author of Rara Avis (Four Way Books 2024); Forgive the Body This Failure (Four Way Books, 2018); The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012);  A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007);  and The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press, 2006).  He is also a co-editor for The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (University of Arizona Press, 2011) and Mentor & Muse:  Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010).

He teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University.

Falconer’s awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, the New Delta Review Eyster Prize for Poetry, and the Barthelme Fellowship.

Born and raised in Virginia, Falconer earned an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland (1997) and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston (2002).  He currently lives in Los Angeles, California with his family.

Meet the Faculty: Marisel Moreno

Marisel Moreno is the Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame, where she teaches US Latina/e/o/x Literature. She is the author of Family Matters: Puerto Rican Women Authors on the Island and the Mainland (University of Virginia Press, 2012) and Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art (part of the “Latinx: The Future is Now Series” at the University of Texas Press, July 2022), which won the 2023 Caribbean Studies Association’s Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award and received an Isis Duarte Book Prize Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association’s Haiti-Dominican Republic Section. She is the recipient of the Indiana Governor’s Award for Service-Learning (2011), the Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award (2016), and the Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C. Award for Social Justice (2019). Moreno’s teaching and research interests focus on AfroLatinx and Latinx Caribbean literarture and cultural production. Her articles have been published in Hispanic Review, Latino Studies, Studies in American Fiction, Afro-Hispanic Review, CENTRO, The Latino(a) Research Review, and MELUS, among others. She has co-created and co-organized, with Thomas F. Anderson, the digital humanities project Listening to Puerto Rico. She also co-curated, with Anderson, the exhibit Art at the Service of the People: Posters and Books from Puerto Rico’s Division of Community Education (DIVEDCO), for the Snite Museum at Notre Dame (2012). The exhibit has traveled to California Lutheran University (2017), the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (8/2018-1/2020), and was on digital display at the Galería de Arte at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico (2020), for which a website was created. She organized the “Centering Blackness, Challenging Latinidades” Latinx Studies Association Conference, hosted by ILS, on campus in July 2022. Prof. Moreno is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies, the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Institute for Social Concerns, and the Initiative on Race and Resilience, and is Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies and Africana Studies.

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