In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Lisa Malawski talks with Angela Trudell Vasquez, who until recently, was the City of Madison Poet Laureate.
Trudell Vasquez is a poet, writer, performer, and activist. Her most recent chapbook, My People Redux (2022, Finishing Line Press) honors her heritage, contending with generational hardships immigrant families face in making a life in America. The chapbook won first place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook Contest for 2022.
Angie began writing seriously when she was seven years old. Her grandmother purchased a diary for her, and this is where she would write her first few lines. Angie tells us that she learned the power of words make her feel whole, well-fed, and warm.
Lisa discusses Angie’s position as the former Madison Poet Laureate, poetry on the Madison Transit buses, Art Night Books, Angela’s day job as Director of Human Resources for End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, and her work on her memoir.
Additionally, Lisa jokes with Angie about some things she has learned about her, such as her love for Etta James and why she sometimes wears two different colored tights to a poetry reading.
Alison Townsend On The Spirit Of Place
What Are You Reading?
A Musical Translation of Movement: Jérôme Camal on Guadeloupean Gwoka and (Post) Coloniality
Joyce Carol Oates, "Zero-Sum"
B. Pladek’s Magical Intersection Of Ecology And History
Jon Melrod's "Fighting Times" in Wisconsin
Novelist And Poet Quan Barry On Nonduality, Communicating Beyond Language, And Writing Across Genres
Poet Deshawn McKinney On Vulnerability As A Muscle
Scholar Nicole Fox On Memorials, Transitional Justice, And The Inescapability Of Memory
Michael Dorgan, "No Fight, No Blame: A Journalist's Life in Martial Arts" (part 2)
On (Short) Storytelling, with Wisconsin writer Steve Fox
The search for dignity in Palestine, with Christa Bruhn
Local Writer JK Cheema On Writing, Family, And Remembering The Past
Jon Shelton on "The Education Myth"
Writer John West On Paradox, Redemption, And Playing Bach
Mark Borthwick, "A Brave and Lovely Woman: Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright"
Public Lies and Professional Secrets in Cold War Washington
Scholar Sami Schalk On Black Disability Politics from the Black Panthers to the 2020 Uprising
Madison Infuses Scott Mitchel May’s New Novel, “Breakneck”
Writer Jeff Sharlet On Whiteness, Slow Civil War, And Harry Belafonte
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