BiblioTejas Writers Conference

8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

9:30 – 11 a.m

Welcome with Coffee & Pastries

Legacy Room

Open

Building Bridges Through Zines and Comics: Multimodal Storytelling as Resistance

Yvonne Samuels, Viridiana Gomez, and Marilyn Garcia
Classroom 102

Poetry and Coffee with Gemini Ink

Alexandra Van de Kamp
Classroom 117

Listening Inward/Reaching Outward

Sarah Joy Thompson
Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m

Flower and Song in South Texas: A Reading with FlowerSong Press

Edward Vidaurre, Paola Carrasco, Celina A. Gomez, Rodney Gomez, and Luisa Vidaurre
Legacy Room

FlowerSong is an independent press rooted in the Rio Grande Valley (TX) that amplifies voices from the borderlands and across the Americas. In this context, the reading functions not just as a performance of texts but as a community-centered literary gathering. FlowerSong events often emphasize inclusivity, dialogue, and the sharing of “essential voices,” creating spaces where writers and audiences engage in collective reflection and cultural affirmation. The thematic throughline centers on borderlands identity, cultural memory, and the blending of languages and traditions.

Discussing the Art of Fiction and Publishing Your First Novel

Rafael C. Castillo, Natalia Treviño, Ben Longoria, and Julian Garcia
Classroom 102

From the inspired spark to struggles and setbacks to a finished manuscript, this panel of three writers will answer questions and provide information on the writers’ process and the production of one’s novel. This panel is for aspiring writers of all levels.

Water Dreaming: Grief, Repression, and Radical Hope, Writing Eco-Memoria for Uncertain Times

Anel Flores
Classroom 117

Teen Writing Circle with Gemini Ink

Gemini Ink
Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

12:45 – 1:30 p.m

1:30 – 2:45 p.m

Where the Poem Lives

Tiana Clark, Carrie Fountain, Charlotte Pence, and Bianca Alyssa Pérez
Legacy Room

Where the Poem Lives celebrates Texas State University’s MFA in Creative Writing by gathering four poets who are part of the TXST community: Carrie Fountain, former Texas Poet Laureate and literary curator of The Wittliff Collections; Tiana Clark, Visiting Professor and National Book Award finalist; Charlotte Pence, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and MFA Director; and Bianca Alyssa Pérez, MFA program coordinator and Austin Youth Poet Laureate program mentor.

Music, Lyrics, and Poetry: A Conversation and Reading

Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson & Mandy Lynn
Classroom 102

Mandy Lynn and Andrea Vocab Sanderson are two interdisciplinary artists whose usage of musicianship, song composition, and performance poetry have taken them to stages and classrooms across the nation. In this hybrid panel/reading/discussion, they will share music and verse, discussing how music and poetry inform and inspire one another in their personal art.

A Poetics of Self-Negation

Ed O’Casey & Jonathan Fletcher
Classroom 117

This workshop focuses on using the Apophatic Mode in the poetry of Self. In the Apophatic Mode, a poet explores what the Self isn’t: the art of illumination through negation, rather than trying to conjure the Self/Subject through direct description, comparison, or metaphor. The act of negation brings both extremes of the Other/Self duality into the conversation. To make up for the deficiencies of language, Apophatic Poetics employs absence, moving past metaphor to a broader experience of Self.

Veteran Writing Collective

Gemini Ink
Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

3 – 4:30 p.m

Reading with Ito Romo

Legacy Room

Open Panel

Classroom 102

Inclusive Narratives: Visivial Poética: Translanguaging as Creative Praxis

Alejandra “Mera Mera” Sánchez Alanís
Classroom 117

Visivial Poética: Translanguaging as Creative Praxis invites participants into an immersive exploration of language as a fluid, embodied, and liberatory act. Rooted in bilingual and translingual practices, the session centers the ways writers, artists, and thinkers move between languages — not as limitation, but as expansion — activating memory, identity, and cultural inheritance through creative expression. The workshop will examine translanguaging as both a pedagogical tool and an artistic strategy, emphasizing its role in dismantling rigid linguistic hierarchies and honoring lived, hybrid realities.

Friends of Dorothy: PRIDE in Plain Sight

Chibbi, Mecca Miles, Gume Laurell III, Diamond Braxton, Cloud Cardona, & Aureleo Sans
Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

4:45 – 6:15 p.m

Last Writes Reading

Gerard Robledo, Josh Robbins, Richard Boada, Diamond Braxton, Miranda Ramirez, & Laurie Ann Guerrero
Legacy Room

The Last Writes Reading is a San Antonio poetry open mic series which happens once a month and is curated by Gerard Robledo, author of My Mother the Butcher. This reading will feature Gerard Robledo, Josh Robbins, Richard Boada, Diamond Braxton, Miranda Ramirez, & Laurie Ann Guerrero.

Consider the Concha: A Reading & Discussion on Chicanx Iconography

Cloud Delfina Cardona, Bianca Alyssa Pérez, Dee Lalo Garcia, and Saúl Hernández
Classroom 102

SA Poetry Archive Presentation

Sara Schmidt
Library Collaborative Zone (upstairs)

6:30 – 8 p.m

Emmy Pérez

Emmy Pérez & Rooster Martinez
Legacy Room