Mission

Voices de la Luna inspires and promotes literature and arts and offers multiple platforms for all authors and artists to share their work with others. We further use literature and arts for educational and healing purposes in the community.

About

Voices de la Luna is a Texas-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in San Antonio, Texas.

We are dedicated to community well-being expressed through the healing powers of literature, art, and conversation.

For more than fifteen years we published a subscription-based print magazine, Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature & Arts Magazine, before retiring it from circulation and launching Yanaguana in 2025.

Voices de la Luna co-founders, Dr. Mo Saidi and Dr. James "Jim" Brandenburg, wanted a high quality literary magazine to feature San Antonio’s energetic and stimulating writers and artists, and to document their interest in the healing properties of poetry and writing. Together with James Adair, Dr. Saidi edited the quarterly issues consistently for fifteen years, and they published poets and artists like Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Bonazzi, Carol Coffee Reposa, Carmen Tafolla, along with many other new and established writers.

Jim Brandenburg, Jungian analyst and Certified Poetry Therapist, wove poetry and dream interpretation in his therapy as a healing process. He offered Poetic Medicine workshops and included the poetry from those workshops in the Voices de la Luna magazine. During his long career as high school and college educator he mentored students at the Institute for Poetic Medicine.

For many years we also partnered with Dario Beniquez to offer free monthly poetry workshops.

The Journal

Yanaguana, a journal of voices, healing, and art, is now available as a free digital journal, with issues published twice a year. In Yanaguana we have continued to focus on nourishing community creativity in poetry, literature, and the arts, with new emphasis on Indigenous voices (“Singing Waters”), community conversation (“Conversation”), and renewed emphasis on contributors to the craft areas of Poetic Medicine and Eco Poetry, this all in addition to our sections featuring individual artists and writers, interviews, reviews, and contributions from poets worldwide.

Community Workshops

Honoring and continuing the work of Voices de la Luna co-founder Jim Brandenburg, we continue to host Poetry Medicine sessions led by Certified Practitioner of Poetic Medicine, poet Lisha Adela García, who was mentored by Jim Brandenburg at the Institute for Poetic Medicine. As vice-president of the Board of Directors of Voices de la Luna and poetry editor of Yanaguana, Lisha carries on his work and his vision for the organization.

In our Creativity & la Consciencia Nueva Masterclass Series, we have taught the craft of writing through low-cost workshops on poetry, nonfiction, and fiction with established and experienced authors such as Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Candy J. Cooper, Kathy Seligman, and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. Beginning Fall, 2026, we have renewed and renamed these craft workshops to Canto, Grito, to better reflect our belief that all voices should be heard, with initial workshops led by writers ire’ne lara silva and Adela Najarro.

Annual Poetry Festival

With the help of HEB and the City of San Antonio Department of Arts and Culture we have presented an annual eclectic poetry celebration featuring poets, music, and open mic poetry. When possible, this festival has included a city-wide bilingual poetry contest offering cash prizes.

We strive to create platforms for artists and in that purpose collaborate with local organizations and partners such as Gemini Ink, Our Word is Our Vote, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Galeria E.V.A., and Alabrava Press, and others in the community who believe in the active and transformative function of art, poetry, and writing.

It is our honor to work in collaboration with other local literary and arts organizations who give voice to new ways of thinking about the healing powers of so many forms of creativity.