Macondo Writers Workshop triumphantly returns to San Antonio for in-person convenings from July 25–29, 2023. The Workshop, founded by the award-winning Sandra Cisneros, includes 5 days of readings, events and workshops led by award-winning faculty. Sandra Cisneros teams up with Ruth Behar to teach the fiction workshop, Rigoberto González leads poetry, Ishmael Reed supported by John Phillip Santos lead non-fiction and Sharon Bridgforth leads the cross-genre workshop. The weeklong convening includes the writers workshops, public readings of the workshop participants, and seminars led by Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco and publishing editor Nicole Counts. All events will take place in Trinity University in San Antonio, with the exception of the closing night Reading and Pachanga event on Saturday, July 29 at 6:30pm which will be held at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. For more information visit www.macondowriters.com.

Macondo Writers Workshop was founded in 1995 by writer and poet Sandra Cisneros, who gathered a group of writers, artists, scholars, and activists in her San Antonio home for informal writing workshops around her kitchen table. Since then it has grown into a master’s level workshop for professional writers in all genres, with a formal, blind, peer-review application process. Once a writer has been accepted into Macondo they become Macondistas and are welcome to return annually. The workshop currently counts over two hundred lifetime members from across the United States, Mexico, Central America and the United Kingdom. And many Macondistas have become national poet laureates, MacArthur fellows, and Guggenheim award recipients in addition to many other accolades, and hundreds of publications.

Named after the town in Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Macondo Writers Workshop convenes writers who work on geographic, cultural, economic, gender, and spiritual borders. Participants recognize their place as writers in our society and the world, and engage in a dynamic conversation on the many ways the literary arts can be a catalyst for transformation in our contemporary American society.

The following events are open to the public:

Macondo Writers Workshop Participants Open Mic Reading I
Thursday July 27, 7-8:30 p.m. CST
Free and open to the public
Trinity University (1 Trinity Pl, San Antonio, TX 78212), Dicke Hall, Room 104

Macondo Writers Workshop Participants Open Mic Reading II
Friday, July 28, 7-9 p.m. CST
Free and open to the public
Trinity University (1 Trinity Pl, San Antonio, TX 78212), Dicke Hall, Room 104

Macondo Writers Workshop Guest/Faculty Reading and Pachanga
Featuring: Sandra Cisneros, Ruth Behar, Rigoberto González, Sharon Bridgforth, John Phillip Santos reading work by Ishmael Reed and Richard Blanco. The MC will be Nely Galan, with music by DJ Despeinada.
Saturday July 29, (doors open at 6:30pm) event begins at 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. CST
Free and Open to the Public
The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, 922 San Pedro Ave, San Antonio.

For further details please visit www.macondowriters.com.

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