Don't Be So Off The Wall, Straighten Up & Fly Right

Ben sits with Michael and Melissa, two UTEP students, to talk about their cause for contesting UTEP's decision in choosing Heather Wilson as the next President of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Eder Perez, applied mathematics major at UTEP and President of UTEP's Queer Student Alliance, sits down with Ben to talk about UTEP's next President Heather Wilson and her record on LGBTQ issues, "including a vote against a 2007 bill that would prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and voting in 2004 and 2006 in favor of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman." -Texas Monthly

José de Piérola (Lima, Peru) is a fiction writer translator and literary critic. He worked for more than ten years as a computer consultant before he left his career to complete a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of California, San Diego in 2007. His novels El camino de regreso and Un beso del infierno chronicle the civil struggle in Peru during the 1980s. He has also published the novels Summa Caligramática and Shatranj: el juego de los reyes, and the short story collections Sur y Norte and Máquina del tiempo. He has translated The Art of Fiction by Henry James and L’Etranger by Albert Camus to Spanish, and Quechua Magic-Religious Tales from Lucanamarca by José María Arguedas to English. Fabulations is his first work in English. He teaches fiction writing at the University of Texas, El Paso.Encompassing thousands of years, Fabulations is composed of minimalist short stories that straddle history and fiction, fact and imagination to tell stories as varied as the early effects of human civilization on our

Benjamin Alire Saenz is told a story by Joe Spencer of a perilous hunting expedition.

Excerpt from Forbes Civic Nation BrandVoice:Monique Navarro has worked on a number of political campaigns, from local races to congressional and presidential campaigns. She recently founded Women’s March El Paso, which has quickly become a formidable progressive organization that unifies the community and raises funds for important causes. Monique’s focus is on empowering and creating opportunities for women to truly have a voice in the decision-making processes that directly impact them. She believes that women hold the power to change the world.

Ben sits down with west Texas artist and activist, Xochitl Rodriguez. Her motion of art began with ballet. She is co-founder of the Caldo Collective, artist driven curatorial collective based in El Paso, Texas.

In Episode 2, Don't Be So Off the Wall, Straighten Up & Fly Right, Benjamin Alire Sáenz discusses a public aversion to poetry and offers his point of view of why.https://www.benjaminsaenz.com/

Benjamin Alire Saenz, author of Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club, introduces himself to his own podcast by interviewing himself.In this personal interview Ben offers a sincere answer to some of his own interesting questions about his life and work.