PaPaGayo
will soon open a reading room at Valle Verde.
PaPaGayo is a program from the EPCC community literary center sponsored
by Salute to the Arts. Its mission is to expand access and success
for students in college and to support community literary endeavors
and innovative programs.
It
does so by encouraging cultural diversity and pluralism, fostering
a writing community, encouraging development of individual writers,
and developing an audience.
The Paul G. Moore Lending library is another resource already available.
It is composed of the estate from a former NMSU English professor
who donated hundreds of books to PaPaGaYo. This lending library is
free and available to all students and faculty. It’s located
at the Rio Grande campus, room A125 and will soon be available at
Valle Verde, room A1116, as well.
PaPaGayo will not only benefit EPCC students, but faculty, staff and
the El Paso, Juarez, Las Cruces community.
Richard Yañez, English professor at EPCC, is the sponsor and
driving force behind the VV chapter of Papagayo. “Culture and
arts empower us as a community to understand itself,” he said.
Denise Chavez entertains
the crowd at La Noche de Cultura
with a reading from her new book, A Taco Testimony.
Photo by Fernie
Garcia, Marketing
One
of the new resources soon to be open to students and staff includes
a literary lounge. It will be a meeting place where visitors can have
a cup of coffee and a snack, as well as read and relax.
PaPaGaYo is an important reserved space where students, staff, and
the community, can get information and submission forms for the Chrysalis,
literary contests, and literary events. Also posted, are up-to-date
information on new creative writing and literature classes, and information
on how to join the former Literary Society, now known as the Writer
Guild.
Richard Yañez is seeking student participation for November’s
Dia de Los Muertos celebrations. It has been called it the Altar of
Stories, and its purpose is to create altars in dedication to writers
to use as a springboard to cultivate a month of stories.
As part of Papagayo’s continuous effort to entertain students
on literature as well as educate, many writers come from out of town
to hold workshops and host readings. On Oct. 4 there was a writing
workshop and book signing by Denise Chavez, a local writer from Las
Cruces.
“The workshop was certainly an experience,” said Alex
Rodriguez, a student from UTEP. An event called La Noche De Cultura
soon followed at the Administrative Services Center.
Chavez read sections from her new book, A Taco Testimony: Meditations
on Family, Food and Culture.
