Kirk Wallace Johnson
June 17 & 18, 2022
Friday night reading, 5:30pm
Saturday 10am-1pm workshop
Kirk Wallace Johnson is a screenwriter and author. He is the creator of Drug Spies, a scripted series about pharmaceutical espionage, and his books include The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, and The Fishermen and the Dragon: Two Dreams at War Off the Texas Coast (forthcoming from Viking Press). He is also the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies.
His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy, among others.
Prior to founding the List Project, Johnson served in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and then Fallujah as the Agency’s first coordinator for reconstruction in the war-torn city.
He is a a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Wurlitzer Foundation. Prior to his work in Iraq, he conducted research on political Islamism as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt. He received his BA from the University of Chicago in 2002.
Ana Castillo
Keynote Speaker, 6th Annual Taos Writer’s Conference
Friday, 7/29/22 at 7pm MT
Ana Castillo (born June 15, 1953) is a Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scholar. Considered one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, Castillo is known for her experimental style as a Latina novelist. Her works offer pungent and passionate socio-political comment that is based on established oral and literary traditions.
Castillo’s interest in race and gender issues can be traced throughout her writing career. Her novel Sapogonia was a 1990 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her text So Far from God was a 1993 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the editor of La Tolteca, an arts and literary magazine. Castillo held the first Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University.
She has attained a number of awards including a 1987 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, The Mixquiahuala Letters, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry and in 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago.
Carmen Agra Deedy
Thursday & Saturday, 10/13/22-10/15/22
Carmen Agra Deedy is the author of twelve books for children, including The Library Dragon, The Cheshire Cheese Cat, Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, and 14 Cows for America, a New York Times Bestseller. The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet! (Scholastic Press) was released in 2017 and Rita and Ralph’s Rotten Day was published in March 2020. Her personal stories first appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered. Funny, insightful, and frequently irreverent, Deedy’s narratives are culled from her childhood as a Cuban refugee in Decatur, Georgia. She is host of the four-time Emmy-winning children’s program, Love That Book!
Joshua Concha
2022-2024 Taos Poet Laureate
Joshua Concha is an Indigenous multi-media artist and writer who has been a tribal resident of the Taos Pueblo for twenty-five years. Concha has worked in a wide range of media (including film and digital storytelling, music, stone, and metal sculpture, silversmithing, and watercolor). His poem, “Rust” was chosen by the previous Poet Laureate, Catherine Strisik, as one of the fifteen poems installed in outdoor venues in Taos. His poems were also selected for “Poetry in Public Places” (2018 & 2019) and have been published in The Notebook: A Progressive Journal About Women and Girls with Rural and Small Town Roots and 200 New Mexico Poems: Celebrating the Centennial and Beyond. His 2022-23 Poet Laureate project is tentatively titled “Taos Poetry in Motion”: a film project, with 9-12 poets reading their work accompanied by visual images.
Upcoming Events
Open Tues-Sat 12pm-4pm 575.758.0081 108 Civic Plaza Drive
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 3225, Taos, NM 87571
THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS
SOMOS programs are made possible in part by these organizations: New Mexico Arts • Taos Community Foundation • The McCune Foundation • The National Endowment For The Arts • The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation • The Peter And Madeleine Martin Foundation for the Arts • The Santa Fe Community Foundation • Taos County Lodgers Tax • The Richard B. Siegel Foundation • TaosNetLLC for high speed internet service • LANL (Los Alamos National Labs) • New Mexico Humanities Council