The Macondo Writers Workshop is an association of socially-engaged master's level writers working to advance creativity, foster generosity, and serve community. Founded in 1995 by writer
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel, ''The House on Mango Street'' (1983), and her subsequent short story collection, ''Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories'' (1991). Her work ex ...
and named after the town in
Gabriel GarcÃa Marquez's ''
One Hundred Years of Solitude'', the workshop gathers writers from all genres who work on geographic, cultural, economic, gender, and spiritual borders. An essential aspect of the Macondo Workshop is a global sense of community; participants recognize their place as writers in our society and the world.
History
Macondo began over twenty years ago when author Sandra Cisneros gathered a group of writers, artists, scholars and activists around her dining table in her King William home to meet informally for rigorous writing workshops. Under the direction of Cisneros, and during its brief time at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, membership grew significantly. As such, Macondo has very established traditions and expectations that include a rigorous application process aimed at professional writers of all genres, and the "Compassionate Code of Conduct," a document drafted by a group of past Macondistas outlining the principles and ethics that govern our organization. Macondo has over two hundred lifetime members, many of whom have been with the association from the beginning and who continue to receive support from the Macondo community. Macondo has grown and solidified itself as a space of intense artistic and cultural creativity where writers, artists, thinkers, scholars, and critics can come together and inspire and challenge one another in order to incite change in our respective communities.
Mission
Cisneros has described Macondo's mission as supporting and uniting writers "who view their work and talents as part of a larger task of community-building and non-violent social change."
The anthropologist and writer
Ruth Behar
Ruth Behar (born 1956) is a Cuban-American anthropologist and writer.[Ruth Beh ...](_blank)
has described participants as "Americans of the other America, moving between cultures, languages, classes, homelands, translating our experience for ourselves and others."
Writing faculty
Noted past faculty members have included
Ai Ogawa,
Dorothy Allison
Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of a ...
,
Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels ''How the GarcÃa Girls Lost Their Accents'' (1991), '' In the Time of the Butterflies'' (1994), and ''Yo!'' ...
,
Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu (; born December 20, 1946) is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He is the winner of the Peabody Award for his film ''Road Scholar'' and the Ovid Prize for p ...
,
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo ( ; born May 9, 1951) is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetr ...
,
Tim Z. Hernandez,
Manuel Muñoz,
Elena Poniatowska
Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor (born May 19, 1932), known professionally as Elena Poniatowska () is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on th ...
,
Luis J. Rodriguez
Luis Javier Rodriguez (born 1954) is an American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. He was the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Rodriguez is recognized as a major figure in contemporary Chicano literature, identifying himself as ...
,
Norma Elia Cantú
Norma Elia Cantú (born January 3, 1947) is a Chicana postmodernist writer and the Murchison Professor in the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Early life and education
She was born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to ...
and
Helena MarÃa Viramontes.
Macondistas
The term "Macondistas" refers to authors and members of the writing community who are alumni of the Macondo Writers' Workshop.
Writers and poets who have attended include:
Pat Alderete,
Francisco Aragon,
Richard Blanco
Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968) is an American poet, public speaker, author and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem " One Today" for Barack Obama's second in ...
, Sarah A. Chavez, Wendy Call,
Denise Chavez
Denise may refer to:
* Denise (given name), people with the given name ''Denise''
* Denise (computer chip), a video graphics chip from the Amiga computer
* "Denise" (song), a 1963 song by Randy & the Rainbows
* Denise, Mato Grosso, a municipalit ...
Alex Espinoza Alicia Gaspar de Alba
Alicia Gaspar de Alba is an American scholar, cultural critic, novelist, and poet whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chicana/o art, culture and sexuality.
Biography
Gaspar de Alba was born on July 29, 1958 in El Paso ...
,
Carmen Giménez Smith
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opà ...
,
Jose B. Gonzalez
Jose B. Gonzalez is a Latino poet and educator.
Gonzalez authored the poetry collections, ''Toys Made of Rock'' (Bilingual Review Press, 2015), and ''When Love Was Reels'' (Arte Public Press, 2017), and with John S. Christie, served as Co-Edito ...
liz gonzález Reyna Grande
Reyna Grande (born 7 September 1975, Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico) is a Mexican author living in the United States.
Biography
Grande grew up in poverty with her two siblings in Iguala, Guerrero. When she was under five years old, her father moved ...
, Laurie Ann Guerrero,
Allison Hedge Coke
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an American poet and editor. Her debut book, ''Dog Road Woman'', won the American Book Award and was the first finalist of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Diane DeCora Award. Since then, she has written five more books ...
,
Joe Jimenez,
Amelia M.L. Montes,
Kristin Naca, Amada Irma Pérez,
Lourdes Portillo
Lourdes Portillo is a Mexican film director, producer, and writer.
Biography
Portillo got her first filmmaking experience at the age of twenty-one when a friend in Hollywood asked her to help out on a documentary. Her formal training began se ...
,
Renato Rosaldo
Renato Rosaldo (born 1941) is an American cultural anthropologist. He has done field research among the Ilongots of northern Luzon, Philippines, and he is the author of ''Ilongot Headhunting: 1883–1974: A Study in Society and History'' (1980) a ...
,
Raul Salinas,
Carmen Giménez Smith
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opà ...
,
Gary Soto
Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.
Life and career
Soto was born to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910–1957) and Angie Soto (1924-). In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaqui ...
, Ito Romo, William Sanchez,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bChnIaOKHfU Youtube interview with William Sanchez about Macondo] Carmen Tafolla
Carmen Tafolla (born 29 July 1951) is an internationally acclaimedy Gibson, Eliza Rodriguez. "Tafolla, Carmen." In ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States.'' (Oxford University Press, 2005). Chicana writer from San A ...
Anel I. FloresNatalia Treviño
Carla Trujillo
Carla (Mari) Trujillo is an American fiction writer, noted for her first novel ''What Night Brings'', about the cultural contradictions of a Chicana lesbian growing up in a Catholic home. She is an administrator at the University of California, B ...
, Baldemar Velasquez
Baldemar Velásquez (born February 15, 1947)''Hispanic Americans Information Directory,'' 1991, p. 408. is an American labor union activist. He co-founded and is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO. He was named a MacArthur F ...
, and Dan Vera
Dan Vera (born South Texas) is an American poet and editor.
Career
Vera is the author of ''Speaking Wiri Wiri'', (Red Hen Press, 2013) and ''The Space Between Our Danger and Delight'', (Beothuk Books, 2009).
His manuscript ''The Guide to Imagi ...
.
See also
*
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros (born December 20, 1954) is an American writer. She is best known for her first novel, ''The House on Mango Street'' (1983), and her subsequent short story collection, ''Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories'' (1991). Her work ex ...
*
List of writers' conferences
This is a list of worldwide authors' conferences for writers of all genres.
Europe
Bulgaria
* Sozopol Fiction Seminars – Sozopol
France
* Paris Writers Retreat – Paris
Iceland
* Iceland Writers Retreat – ReykjavÃk
Ireland ...
*
McOndo
McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks with the magical realism mode of narration, and counters it with languages borrowed from mass media. The literature of McOndo presents urban Latin American life, in opposition to the fictio ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Macondo Writers WorkshopSandra Cisneros on MacondoInterview with William Sanchez about founding of Macondo
1995 establishments in Texas
Alternative education
American writers' organizations
Arts organizations based in Texas
Bexar County, Texas
Creative writing programs
Culture of San Antonio
Educational institutions established in 1995
Events in Texas
Recurring events established in 1995
Writers' conferences