El Martillo Press and Espacio 1839 Present:
WE STILL BE Paul S. Flores Official Book Release Party
August 18, 2023
7PM-9:30PM
Espacio 1839, Boyle Heights, East LA
The long-awaited full-length debut of poems by the nationally-celebrated, award-winning spoken word artist, playwright, and educator Paul S. Flores, WE STILL BE: Poems and Performances will officially be released August 18, 2023 with a high energy blast of contemporary literary performance at Espacio 1839 First St. in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.
WE STILL BE is a collection of poetry that masterfully weaves together political and personal testimonies that speaks to issues of gentrification, mixed Latino identity, masculinity, machismo, incarceration, systemic racism, racial unity, fatherhood, and more. The event features performances by Paul S. Flores with East LA musician Quetzal Flores, theater artist Jesse Bliss, Los Poets del Norte (Nico & Shorty), as well as El Martillo Publisher and Editor in Chief Matt Sedillo and David Romero. Published by Los Angeles based El Martillo Press copies of WE STILL BE will be on hand for purchase with Flores available to sign them after.
ABOUT PAUL S. FLORES
Paul S. Flores is a San Francisco based artist of Mexican and Cuban-American descent who has built a national reputation for interview-based theater and bilingual spoken word. He integrates indigenous and Latino healing practices to tell the stories of real people impacted by immigration and systemic inequalities. Flores appeared on Season 3 and 4 of HBO’s Def Poetry. He is the author of the play “PLACAS: The Most Dangerous Tattoo,” and the novel Along The Border Lies. His work has played across the United States and internationally in Cuba, Mexico, and El Salvador. Paul is a Doris Duke Artist Award winner, and he teaches Theater at the University of San Francisco. He is a teaching artist with the Prison Arts Project at CMF in Vacaville, and in San Quentin State Prison. He also works a cultural event producer at Acción Latina in San Francisco’s Mission District.
ABOUT WE STILL BE
“Flores is a master weaver with a blazing kaleidoscopic lamp that reveals & performs our lives. He writes with a “Spanglish soul of hope,” & a keen & round vision of a peoples, youth, familia, artists, barrio, nation & the icy questions of Identity, Oppression, Cultura and Liberation. He does this in a non-stop Bay Area shuffle, tap & samba across time and space, streets & drive-ins, between “Toltecs, Conquistadors” & diamond-eyed students who have been through hard times. Flores is not afraid to speak of his wounds of familia —yes, he is intimate, he is loving. He escorts us through the Bay Area, land of poets, artists, musicians and muralists - he is part of that, he is all that — and we will be as we enter this world. And he performs as he writes, feels and projects his Spanglish soul onto our body. I cannot think of such a supernova, unique, groundbreaking book as this — “This is San Francisco’s heartbeat.”
Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate
“Flores stakes his claim in Bay Area poetics writing with true intimacy, vulnerability, and radical love for his community. WE STILL BE is part memoir, part call to action, and part cultural celebration. It is a declaration of hope that we will all win, that men can be trusted, and that San Francisco’s poetic heartbeat is still something worth believing in.”
- Amalia Ortiz, San Antonio, TX
WHAT: Official Release Party for WE STILL BE debut book of poetry by Paul S. Flores
WHO: Paul S. Flores, Quetzal Flores, Jesse Bliss, Los Poets del Norte, Matt Sedillo, David Romero
WHEN: Friday, August 18, 2023
TIME: 7:00PM-9:30PM
WHERE: Espacio 1839
1839 1st Street
Boyle Heights, Eastlos, CA 90033
TICKETS: FREE
MORE INFO: https://www.elmartillopress.com