Marfa Dialogues/Diálogos en Marfa
September 17-19, 2010
Current speakers and panelists include:
Photo courtesy of the author
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an award-winning poet and novelist whose work has been translated into Dutch, German, and Spanish. Sáenz has been a member of the faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso since 1992 and is currently at work on a new book of poems, Night Disappearing into a Patient Sky. He is a member of PEN, the Academy of American Poets and AWP.
Photo courtesy of Texas Monthly
Cecilia Ballí
Cecilia Ballí is an award-winning journalist with Texas Monthly magazine and also contributes to Harper’s Magazine. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin, where she teaches courses on the U.S.-Mexico border, gender and violence, and narrative and ethnographic writing. Ballí is working on a book about the border fence in the Rio Grande Valley.
Photo by Jack Dykinga
Charles Bowden
Charles Bowden, the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and the Sidney Hillman Award, is the critically acclaimed author of numerous books, including Murder City and Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing. He is a contributing editor for GQ and Mother Jones, and also writes for Harper’s, the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, and Aperture. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Photo by Dominique Nabakov, 2008
Mark Danner
Mark Danner has written about foreign affairs and American politics for more than two decades, covering Latin America, Haiti, the Balkans and the Middle East among other stories. He was formerly a staff writer at The New Yorker and contributes frequently to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book, Stripping Bare the Body, brings together his reporting from the world’s most troubled regions. He teaches at the University of California and at Bard College.
Photo courtesy of the filmmaker
Luis Carlos Davis
Luis Carlos Davis was born and raised in the border towns of Ambos Nogales, in Sonora and Arizona. His life is a product of two countries, two cultures, and two languages, giving him unusual access along the U.S.-Mexico border. Davis is currently directing and producing two documentaries, one in Mexico and the other in Arizona.
Photo by Don Usner
Hamilton Fish
Hamilton Fish is the publisher of The Washington Spectator, and advises a variety of independent publications, including Lapham’s Quarterly and The Nation magazine. Mr. Fish is the producer of two of the epic films of Marcel Ophuls, The Memory of Justice and the Academy Award-winning Hotel Terminus, and is currently working on a film about the last Holocaust prosecutions, titled The End of Living Memory.
Photo from author's website
Laura Flanders
Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv, the daily news-discussion seen on Free Speech TV and online at Firedoglake.com and GRITtv.org. She also serves as the host of RadioNation, the weekly radio program of the Nation Magazine. Flanders is the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians and BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species, and her writing regularly appears in The Nation, Alternet, and Ms. Magazine.
Photo courtesy of Mr. Halpern
Robert Halpern
Robert Halpern was born and raised in Alpine, Texas. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1980. He worked five years at the Odessa American, from beat reporter to city editor, then three years at the El Paso Times as assistant city editor. He came to The Big Bend Sentinel in 1988 and in 1993 acquired the paper with his wife, Rosario. In 1994 they acquired The International Presidio paper. Halpern has lived near the border and written about it for most of his professional career. Robert and Rosario have three beautiful children, two cats, and a dog.
Photo from author's website
Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail, an American journalist, was one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 invasion. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 to 2005, and presented his stories on his website, entitled Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service news agency, among other outlets. He has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now!. Jamail is the recipient of the 2008 The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
Photo from the band's website
La Santa Cecilia
La Santa Cecilia is an LA-based band combining cumbia, bossa nova, rumba, boleros, tango, rock, and klezmer music. Their all-encompassing sound has given them a unique identity as an up-and-coming Los Angeles breakthrough. The group consists of guitarist Gloria Estrada, accordionist and requintero Jose Carlos, bassist Alex Bendana, percussionist Miguel Ramirez, drummer Hugo Vargas, and lead vocalist Marisoul.
Sandra Rodríguez Nieto
Sandra Rodríguez Nieto is a journalist living in Juarez who reports for El Diario de El Paso and Diario de Juarez.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Staudt
Kathleen Staudt
Kathleen (Kathy) Staudt is Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has written, co-authored, or edited 16 books, including six on the U.S.-Mexico border. Cities and Citizenship at the U.S.-Mexico Border: The Paso del Norte Metropolitan Region will be published September 28 by Palgrave USA. Last year Staudt coordinated UTEP’s Global Public Policy Forum on the War on Drugs.
Photo by Tom Lamb, 2006
David Taylor
David Taylor’s photographs, multimedia installations, and artist’s books have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions across the country. Taylor has completed recent major commissions for artwork installed in the U.S. Border Patrol Station in Van Horn, Texas and the United States Federal Courthouse in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Taylor’s examination of the U.S. Mexico border was supported by a 2008 Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, with the work published in a forthcoming monograph from Radius Books.
