Everyone has a voice. In the arts, we may sing, we may holler. We believe everyone can sing, and we know everyone can holler. Join us for Canto, Grito, a Creative Writing Workshop Series like no other.

What is Canto, Grito? 

"Canto, Grito" is a list of affirmations for writers: "I Sing, I Holler," but it is more than that. It is a creative writing workshop series that is designed to give participants time with authors as well as time to write. It has a history.

Voices de la Luna once held a workshop series called, "Creativity y la Consciencia Nueva." As we organized to revive this series, we felt a name change was in order. Here's why: 

This workshop had been dubbed a "master level workshop," which was available to writers of all levels. We began to rethink the word "master," and about the horrifying damage that has been done to our society because of this word and its implications about hierarchies of power and false ideas about who has and who does not have knowledge. We reject this word, and in the spirit of re-envisioning what this workshop had as its heart, an idea inspired by Texas author and theorist, Gloria Anzaldua, we renamed the whole series "Canto, Grito." 

The ideas behind "consciencia nueva" were not lost though. They are based on Anzaldua's essay, "Toward a New Consciousness/ La conciencia de la mestiza," where she says, "[the future] depends on the straddling of two or more cultures." 

Anzaldua argues that healing the psyche and helping humanity evolve will happen through artistic intercultural communication—and being honest when sharing our stories: "Through our literature, our art, our corridos and folktales, we must share our history . . . so they won't turn people away because of their fears and racial ignorances." 

We are building this program around the premise that by having writers of all levels interact with one another through interviews, craft talks, conversation, and meaningful workshop, we are building community, raising awareness, sharing histories and the stories that connect us, and we can do this using whatever artistic medium we choose: music, song, dance, painting, photography, writing, textile arts, poetry, prose, you name it. This is one of the reasons why Yanaguana is a digital journal: we want the opportunity to feature both non-visual and visual arts.

In the past, we have had workshops with Pulitzer Prize finalist Candy Cooper, winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize; American Book Award and National Book Award Finalist, Allison Adele Hedge Coke; and National best selling author, Guadalupe Garcia McCall.

Our first Canto, Grito Writing Workshop will be on the 15th of September, which is Mexican Independence Day, a day when the colonizing nation of Spain was invited to leave the land. 

It is a day that began a new era of independence, and to recognize this, every 15th of September, there will be gritos throughout the world, hollering for autonomy, for independence. Mexico wanted to control its direction, its narrative, its role in history. This is what so many humans want for themselves-- and need. At Voices de la Luna, we believe everyone has a voice, and if it is from la luna, well, it must be coming in loud and clear as a grito, as a holler.

We love the word "canto" too, for its multiple meanings in different contexts and cultures: "poem," "section of poem," "I sing," "a song" "sang." We love the spectrum of meanings and sounds between a canto and grito. So many possibilities of communication are held here in this phrase, a phrase that will hold the range of voices that we hear at our workshops

If you like the sound of this and want to or can provide a scholarship to a writer or artist who can benefit from this workshop, please do! Let us know!  Writers need the most expensive thing on the planet to write: time, and this means they often cannot afford extra money to deepen and develop their craft.

Thank you for supporting our mission, your support is invaluable. Our next Canto, Grito workshop will be on October 13th, 6-8PM CST, and will be taught by Nicaraguan poet, Adela Najarro, author of Variations In Blue, a book published by Red Hen in collaboration with Notre Dame's Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute of Latino Studies.