The Josefina Niggli Latinx Speaker Series invites writers, scholars, musicians, and artists to campus to share their experiences and meet with students. Join us during the 2023 spring semester to hear from memoirist Stephanie Elizondo Griest and YA author Angela Velez.

February 23, 3:00

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

130 Bardo Arts Center

Award-winning writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest will discuss and read from her work in this free event. A booksigning will follow her presentation. 

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her five award-winning books include Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough; and All the Agents & Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, Orion, and the Oxford American. Her distinctions include a Henry Luce Scholarship to China, a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton, and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Prize. Currently Associate Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed on five continents in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department. 

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March 23, 4:00

Angela Velez

Illusions (University Center)

As part of the final day of the 21st annual Spring Literary Festival, YA author Angela Velez will share from her work and sign copies of her novel Lulu and MIlagro's Search for Clarity.  

Angela Velez grew up in Baltimore, under the watchful eye of her Peruvian immigrant parents. She has a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Durham, with her piles of books, three plastic flamingos, and one wobbly disco ball. Lulu and Milagro’s Search for Clarity is her first novel.