Year of Residency: 2019

Education

• MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco, California
• Mass Media Communications Bachelor’s degree,  Universidad de las Americas Puebla (UDLAP)
• Film Production Diploma, Vancouver Film School in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Resume

Besides my work as an independent writer, one of the most fulfilling tasks I have undertaken as a young professional was that of becoming a university professor. I worked as a Teacher ́s Assistant at the University of San Francisco for a full year, and before that experience, three years I held the position of film instructor and Associate Professor in two important universities located in Puebla, Mexico, teaching specialized subjects in the likes of Screenwriting, Writing for Television, and Film Editing.
I was the recipient of a full writing fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center; I attended the Gullkistan Residency in Iceland; and my work has been published in Taste of Cinema and StoryScape Journal.

Artist statement

I am a gay, Latino man. I am proud of these identifying labels. But more than labels I like to think of them as bells around my neck, jingling my essence and announcing my presence. Never before, however, had I found myself striving, yearning, cramping and grasping and gasping so hard for the opportunity to be recognized and probed and looked at and redefined by the carrousel of faces twirling around me through the clangs and clatters of such bells as I did when pursuing my dream of becoming a writer in The United States of America.
I journeyed to California to strengthen my abilities as a writer, to create something of unyielding quality, no matter how sored or unpolished, but something born from the unpretentious and self-effacing energy of my passion for the craft of writing. I failed. I wanted to end my three year stay in America with the completion of a full-length novel ready to be sent off to diverse literary agencies, but the vicissitudes of that complicated voyage kept me from fulfilling my goal. Still, my determination continues to be ironclad. And so, now I look forward, towards vast and plentiful opportunities around the world that can shift my purpose of finishing my story back on track.
As a Mexican, Queer writer, I find myself speeding through these highways of self-identification, tunneling through them and traversing in and out of them through the leering of others. There is something alluring in the way we recognize ourselves, in the way we let ourselves be destroyed by the compass of an outsider´s eyes. Or for that matter, in the way we rebuilt ourselves wholly by the twinkle of a foreign retina, by the blooming of an alien pupil.
I have come to the conclusion that, as a Latinx writer, I can only cross these bridges, these goals, if I am truly aware, if I truly really listen to the rings and chimes of my bells, and most importantly, if I push myself to hear and understand the pulse and the lifeblood of my community in order to plaster it on a blank piece of paper. Henceforth, it is my upmost desire to get published in open spaces that celebrate our identity, and pursue the support of Residencies and programs that allow us to get there like The Belgrade Art Studio Residency.

Project

I started working towards a memoir of my childhood, but the influence of some of my favorite Latino authors and their penmanship soaked in magical realism kept veering me away down other paths I was not supposed to explore through the highways of this non-fiction sub-genre.
I am working on a novel that spans through different sections and follows the coming of age story of our main character from the moment he is abandoned by his mother and poops his heart out, to the final stage where he rescues the love of his life from limbo, embraces his “gay-self”, and accepts the reality of his growing up alongside his grandmother.
My mother and my father, and more recently, my grandma, have all passed away. This novel is a memento of my life with them. Even if a devil´s tail never hung from my grandma´s rump or by any means my mother was ever a killer, this novel was an overwhelming dug out to rescue their memory. There is no one else in the world that will care to remember their lives as much I do, and through this novel, I hope I can make them justice and cast a light on what they represented and still symbolize to me.