Words on a Wire

Patos Salvajes is the new podcast and radio program produced by the students of the Bilingual M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso. The first episode is a conversation with Mexican musicians Milo Tamez and Jerónimo Naranjo, who were part of the Texas/Mexico ensemble of Nameless Sound, based in Houston, Texas, who performed at The Hill, a sculpture by the artist James Magee, in October 2023. A talk guided by the interweaving of creative processes and the relationship between music and literature.

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Patos Salvajes es el nuevo espacio radiofónico de los estudiantes del M.F.A. en Escritura Creativa Bilingüe en la Universidad de Texas en El Paso. Nuestra primera emisión es una conversación con los músicos mexicanos Milo Tamez y Jerónimo Naranjo, quienes fueron parte del ensamble Texas/México de Nameless Sound, con base en Houston, Texas, que intervinieron The Hill, escultura de James Magee, en octubre de 2023. Una charla guiada por el entramado de los procesos creativos y la relación entre la música y la literatura.

Host Daniel Chacón invites novelist and short story writer Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny into the Poets’ Cove to discuss her latest book, Trash (Deep Vellum, 2023).

Host Tim Z. Hernandez speaks with award-winning film and television director Carlos Avila in this episode of Words on a Wire.

Carlos Avila has directed for various companies such as NBC/Universal, Warner Brothers Television, Sony Pictures Television, CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, Shoreline Entertainment, New Line Cinema and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). His credits include the television series, Grimm and Cold Case, the feature film, Price of Glory (which was developed at the Sundance Institute’s Writers and Directors Lab), and several independently produced projects including Distant Water, Foto-Novelas and Tales of Masked Men. Carlos’s new award-winning short film, The Kill Floor, is currently playing at film festivals throughout the country. Carlos is also partnered with veteran producer David Valdes (Avatar: The Way of Water, Dune 2 and Unforgiven). Together, they are developing the feature film, Last Band Standing, which Carlos wrote and will direct.

Daniel invites Carlos Fidel Espinoza back into the Poets’ Cove to discuss his darkly humorous debut novel, The Sacred History of Braulio Cantero (Flowersong Press, 2023). 

Daniel talks to Dagoberto Gilb, one of the most important Latinx writers of our time, a conversation that spans Gilb’s entire career, from his first books, meeting Raymond Carver, his relationships with publishers and the public, and many other subjects. This is an intimate conversation with an important American writer and thinker. In it Gilb reveals a lot, not only about himself, but about literature in general, being a cultural icon, making choices, and living the dream of the writer’s life.

Tim speaks with former Border Patrol agent and UTRGV Professor Robert "Mike" Magee. The two discuss an ongoing collaborative project founded by Magee in 2018,  using Tim's book, "All They Will Call You" to teach empathy and compassion to future Border Patrol agents.

Mike Magee is a retired Lecturer in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV).  He is the editor of the published anthology textbook, The Contemporary Law Enforcement Anthology, Challenges and Opportunities for Today’s Officers. He holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree, with an emphasis in Alternate Dispute Resolution, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the State University of New York. He’s had a thirty-year career in local and federal law enforcement, including twenty-two years with U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its predecessor agency U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS). He served as the national president of the INS employees’ labor Union. 

He has presented at numerous national conferences, been interviewed in the national media, and testified before congressional committees and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute at the U.S. Capitol Building. Since his retirement in 2023, he has also been volunteering at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Alamo, Texas and the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park, Brownsville, Texas.

Host Daniel Chacón invites author, poet, and professor Inmaculada Lara Bonilla, Ph.D., into the Poets’ Cove to discuss her new book of poems, decir bóveda.

Inmaculada is an author and Associate Professor of Latin American and Latinx Literature and Cultural Studies at Hostos Community College, CUNY, where she also serves as the Director of the Latin American Writers Institute and as Chief Editor of the Hostos Review/ Revista Hostosiana.

On this episode, host Daniel Chacón speaks with acclaimed author Cristina García. They discuss Cristina’s new book, Vanishing Maps (Knopf, 2023), a follow-up to her best-selling novel, Dreaming in Cuban.