S4:E27 Naomi Helena Quiñonez with Victoria Bañales

Celebrated Chicana poet Naomi Helena Quinoñez reads and discusses poems that thematize divine feminine power, women’s spirituality, racial oppression, social justice, and more. Naomi Helena Quiñonez is a poet, educator and activist, and author of three collections of poetry, Exiled Moon, The Smoking Mirror, and Hummingbird Dream/Sueño de Colibri. Quiñonez edited several critical and literary publications including Invocation L.A: Urban Multicultural Poetry Anthology, which won the American Book Award, Decolonial Voices, and Caminos Magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in American History and contributes to the scholarship of Latino/as and women of color. Quiñonez has been featured throughout the country, including the Los Angeles Writers Festival, the Nuyrican Café, the De Young Museum, and the Miami Book Festival. She has shared the mic with Quincy Troupe, Octavia Butler, Luis Rodriguez, and Ana Castillo. Her work has appeared in the Colorado Review, Infinite Divisions, Voices of our Ancestors, and Maestrapeace. Recently Quiñonez received the Teyolia Community Award from the San Francisco International Flor Y Canto Festival.  She’s also an honoree of the San Francisco Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a recipient of the Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award in poetry, a Rockefeller Fellowship, the American Book Award, and a California Arts Grant. She is featured in Notable Hispanic Women and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. She currently lives in Oakland. For more information about the author’s books or to purchase copies, contact Naomi Helena Quiñonez at [email protected]