Spotlight on Melinda Palacio and her new poetry collection “How Fire is a Story, Waiting” published by Tía Chucha Press

To contact us Click HERE

MelindaPalacio is an award-winning poet and author from South-Central Los Angeles.  She studied Comparative Literature at UCBerkeley and earned a graduate degree in the same field at UC Santa Cruz.  Palacio is a 2007 PEN USA Emerging VoicesRosenthal Fellow and participated in the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.  In 2009, she won Kulupi Press’s Sense of Place2009 competition for her poetry chapbook, FolsomLockdown.  Her poetry and fictionhave been widely published and anthologized, including Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern CaliforniaLiterature (Bilingual Press), SouthernPoetry Anthology IV: Louisiana (Texas Review Press), and the literary journalPALABRA, to name a few.

Thisyear saw the publication of her first novel, Ocotillo Dreams (Bilingual Press), which has received criticalacclaim and is the winner of several awards including the PEN Oakland JosephineMiles Award (which will be awarded this December in a ceremony), and the MariposaAward for Best First Book.

Melinda Palacio

Andthis week will see the official release of Palacio’s first full-length poetrycollection, HowFire is a Story, Waiting, published by Luis J. Rodriguez’s Tía Chucha Press.  
From thepublisher: “MelindaPalacio’s newest poetry collection creates images that are at onceheartbreaking and humorous.  She tackleselemental subjects of family and childhood with the same depth and grace asthat of myth making and death.  As theonly child of a mother who died too young, she infuses her words with longingand life, and celebrates the women who came before her.  Each poem offers up the truth in a fearlessand unsentimental voice.  Palacio’slyrical language punches an unexpected pause to subjects such as domesticviolence and her childhood in South Central Los Angeles.  How FireIs A Story, Waiting is divided into four sections: Fire, Air, Water, andEarth.  In each section Palacio tempersheartbreak, violence, and disappointment with the antidote of humor, beauty,and an appreciation for life.”
Praise for How Fire is a Story, Waiting:
“Palacio’swork is expansive, physical, funeral-wet, elevated, funny, existential,woman-story, jazzy and Pachukona.  She isunafraid to dive head-on into questions of death, loss and self. Into the fieryentwined spikes of father-daughter estrangements, mother-daughter intimaciesand most of all, she is ‘insomniac’ bold in this volume as an ongoing sequenceon self.  Melinda's collection has Bopand ‘swagger,’ lingo, song, denuncia, compassion and wild, unexpected turns—allthe key ingredients and hard-won practices of a poet (and shaman) in command ofher powers.  I don't think there isanything like this book.  ¡Brillantissima!”—Juan Felipe Herrera
“’Continueto fix broken things,’ Melinda Palacio writes in ‘Ramona Street,’ and the poemsin How Fire Is a Story, Waiting areconsumed with naming the problems of the world and trying—however provisionally—toset them right.  Palacio's verse, densewith imagery, is by turns sorrowful and sardonic, and always the voice is herown.  There's a little universe in thisbook: enter and learn.” —David Starkey, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Emeritus
To find out how youcan plan a literary event with Melinda Palacio, please visit her events page.