Xánath Caraza I

Poet Xánath Caraza is a two-time International Latino Book Award-winner in 2018. In part one of this interview on stage at the Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center, she describes her approach to her creative writing, which often begins in Spanish, and talks about her partnership with literary translator, Sandra Kingery. She reads from her award-winning bilingual book, Sin Preambulos/Without Preamble, and shares her poem about Kansas City, where she has lived for two decades. She also talks about her travels, including a pilgrimage to see a jade mask on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, which inspired some of the work in her 2019 collection Balamku. Caraza also shares poetry from her earlier book Ocelocihuatl/Jaguar Woman.