Join us for a virtual event celebrating Dreaming of You: A Novel in Verse by Melissa Lozada-Oliva. Dreaming of You is an absurd yet heartfelt examination of celebrity worship. Lozada-Oliva will be in conversation with Jonathan Mendoza.
A young Latinx poet grappling with loneliness and heartache decides one day to bring Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla back to life. The séance kicks off an uncanny trip narrated by a Greek chorus of gossiping spirits as she journeys through a dead celebrity prom, encounters her shadow self, and performs karaoke in hell.
In visceral poems embodying millennial angst, paragraph-long conversations overheard at her local coffeeshop, and unhinged Twitter rants, Lozada-Oliva reveals an eerie, sometimes gruesome, yet moving love story.
Playfully morbid and profoundly candid, an interrogation of Latinidad, womanhood, obsession, and disillusionment, Dreaming of You grapples with the cost of being seen for your truest self.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a nationally recognized writer and performer. She is the author of the poetry chapbook peluda. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Breakbeat Poets Vol 4: Latinext, Redivider, Wax Nine, the Poetry Project. Lozada-Oliva has been featured in Audible, Glamour Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, BBC Mundo, and other media outlets. She earned her MFA from NYU.
Jonathan Mendoza is a Boston-bred, Chicago-based Jewish and Mexican-American poet, organizer, and social justice educator. He is a National Poetry Slam Champion, winner of the Sonia Sanchez – Langston Hughes Poetry Prize, and a three-time award winner at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. He is also a proud, anxious Virgo, Greek yogurt enthusiast, and devout believer in the power of young people to shape this world for the better. Books, updates, and more information can be found at MendozaPoetry.com and @JMendoza010 on Twitter and Instagram.
**All of our virtual events are recorded and viewable anytime on Women & Children First's Crowdcast Channel. The recordings are later uploaded with closed captioning to our YouTube Channel within a week or two of the event. **
