Tulsa Artist Fellowship welcomes our community to join us at Flagship on Tuesday, October 18 from 7-8:30pm for Talking 'bout a (Queer) Revolution featuring Cuban poet, playwright, and critic Norge Espinosa Mendoza. Mendoza will discuss the history of Cuban LGBTQ writers, state-sponsored repression and censorship, and the slow march toward more accommodationist policies during the regime's 60-year history. A bilingual reading from his upcoming book of poetry will follow, addressing the Cuban government's violent crackdown of an "unsanctioned" Gay Pride parade on May 11, 2019.

Following a brief intermission, the evening will culminate with an audience volunteer reading of a scene from Mendoza's play, Cintas de seda, premiering in North American this October. Cintas de seda imagines a conversation between the seventeenth-century Mexican nun and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Tulsa Artist Fellow Arthur Dixon will translate the play reading.

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Cuban poet, playwright, and critic Norge Espinosa is widely considered one of Cuba's most important LGBTQ writers and activists. Founder of the Jornadas de Arte Homoerótico and co-organizer of the Jornada contra la Homofobia y Transfobia, he is a graduate of the Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte. He is currently a consultant for Havana’s Teatro El Público, for which he has authored original works and adapted plays by Racine, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Fassbinder. He has collaborated with the Royal Court Theatre, Teatro SEA, Franchement Tu Théâtre, and Escena Contemporánea Lima. His poem “Vestido de novia” was the first poem on a homoerotic theme to win the Premio de Poesía from Cuba's state cultural magazine El Caimán Barbudo, and he holds the distinction of being the first Cuban to attend the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in English translation in the New England Review, World Literature Today, and Latin American Literature Today. His play Cintas de seda, which imagines a dialogue between Mexican nun and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and painter Frida Kahlo, will receive its North American premiere in October during the Chicago International Latin Theater Festival.

Literary translator George Henson’s Oklahoma roots run deep. Raised in Sapulpa, George’s paternal great-grandparents John and Laura Smith arrived in Indian Territory in 1889 in two covered wagons with their three daughters and John's widowed mother Harriet. Two additional daughters would come later, including George’s grandmother Lottie Agnes in 1894. That same year, Harriet would marry the Rev. Sylvester Morris, whose house is recognized today as the oldest existing house in Tulsa and now sits at Owen Park. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in Spanish, George went on to study in Spain, receiving an M.A. in Spanish from Middlebury College. He would later earn a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. It was there, under the tutelage of Tulsa native Dr. Charles Hatfield that George took his first steps in literary translation, which led to the publication of “Canaries,” a short story by Elena Poniatowska, Mexico’s grande dame of letters, in the University of Tulsa’s literary journal Nimrod. Today, George is considered one of the foremost translators of contemporary Latin American prose. His eight book-length translations include Cervantes laureate Elena Poniatowska’s The Heart of the Artichoke, Luis Jorge Boone’s Cannibal Night, Alberto Chimal’s The Most Fragile Objects, in addition to five books by Cervantes laureate Sergio Pitol. Writing in the L.A. Review of Books, Ignacio Sánchez Prado lauded George as “one of the most important literary translators at work in the United States today.” In addition to his book-length translations, George’s work has appeared in numerous venues, including World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, The Paris Review, The New England Review, The Guardian, and Granta.

Arthur Malcolm Dixon is a translator, editor, and occasional writer from Ardmore, Oklahoma. He holds undergraduate degrees in History and Spanish and an MA in Spanish from the University of Oklahoma. He is co-founder and Managing Editor of Latin American Literature Today, an online, multilingual literary journal dedicated to publishing the work of Latin American authors. He has translated a wide range of writers and genres, with particular interest in the work of Indigenous authors and the uniquely Latin American variety of literary journalism known as crónica. His work in Latin American Literature Today has highlighted writing by Mapuche, Wayuu, and Yucatec Maya authors, and he has translated renowned Latin American journalists Alberto Salcedo Ramos, Felipe Restrepo Pombo, Leila Guerriero, and Diego Enrique Osorno. Other published translations include work by Ana Enriqueta Terán, Ricardo Piglia, Andrés Sánchez Robayna, Victoria De Stefano, Sergio Chejfec, Juan Villoro, Alonso Cueto, Mario Bellatin, Emiliano Monge, Andrés Felipe Solano, and Yoss. His book-length translations to date include the novels Immigration: The Contest by Carlos Gámez Pérez and There Are Not So Many Stars by Isaí Moreno, both published by Katakana Editores, along with the verse collection Intensive Care by Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza, published by Alliteration