• Coraza
  • Rachelle Escamilla Rachelle Escamilla
  • Lourdes Figueroa Lourdes Figueroa
  • Leticia Hernández-Linares Leticia Hernández-Linares

Full: The Hunger Moon

Programmed by MK Chavez

The February moon is the hunger moon. It reigns over a time of surrender and renewal of that which nurtures us and gives us new life. Poets Rachelle Escamilla, Lourdes Figueroa, and Leticia Hernández-Linares pay homage to love in all its manifestations. Coraza plays indie folk pop. Attendees receive a hunger moon gift to take home.

Rachelle Escamilla is a Chicana poet from the Central Coast of California. Her award-winning first book of poetry, Imaginary Animal, has been rereleased as a second edition with a foreword written by poet Manuel Paul López. Escamilla is the founder of a number of creative writing and poetry programs in the United States and China and was the producer and host of the longest-running poetry radio show in the United States. Her article “Searching for my Family,” about her grandfather’s testimony to Congress in 1969 about the working conditions for migrant workers, was published by the Library of Congress.

Lourdes Figueroa is an oral poet. She received her MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry at the University of San Francisco. Her work has been published in Mirage, The City Is Still Speaking, Something Worth Revising, Elderly, Eleven Eleven, and Blush-lit; her chapbook Vuelta is forthcoming. Her work continues to appear locally and in faraway villages. In 2020 she and her wife, Peggy Peralta, launched Bilbil Projects, a space where poems and film come together.

The daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, Leticia Hernández-Linares is an interdisciplinary, bilingual writer, artist, and racial justice educator. She is the author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl, and Alejandria Fights Back!La lucha de Alejandria!). She was in the inaugural YBCA 10 artist cohort and was the coeditor of The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. A five-time San Francisco Arts Commission grantee, she teaches in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.

Coraza is a feminist indie folk-pop group based in Oakland. With roots in Chile, Guam, Mexico, and the Philippines, Coraza’s sound is a unique fusion of experimental and traditional; nostalgic and provocative, combining elements of South American folkloric style with catchy contemporary rhythms, bilingual lyrics, electric distortions, and delicious harmonies.