Advising and Academic Support Center Director Tomás Baiza, who is a fiction writer, will give a reading at 6 p.m. on Oct. 11 in the Bergquist Lounge in the Student Union Building. Casita Nepantla and the Center for Educational Opportunities host the event.
Baiza will read from a work-in-progress called “On Inconvenient Spanglish Characters — Or, How We Don’t Have to Speak in Italics.” He will discuss his early experiences as a Chicano storyteller and what it means for him “to write characters who don’t speak like most readers would expect.” Baiza will also read excerpts from his novel, “Delivery: A Pocho’s Accidental Guide to College, Love, and Pizza Delivery” (Running Wild Press, 2023), and his collection “A Purpose to Our Savagery.”
Baiza is originally from San José, California. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net, and Best American Short Stories anthologies and has appeared in various print and online anthologies and journals. Baiza has fenced in Italy, been rescued by helicopter from the Sierra Nevada, fended off wild dogs while hitchhiking in rural Morelos, México, and once delivered a dozen pizzas to a Klingon-themed orgy at a sci-fi convention. When he is not writing, he is running trails, obsessing over bonsai trees and playing guitar far too loud for his own good.
Books will be available for purchase at the reading, which is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.