The session will include brief introductions to our books (8 minutes max per speaker). The rest of the time will be dedicated to a conversation with the audience about the writing and publishing process, as well as to answering any other questions the audience has about our works or our experiences across different types of institutions and presses.

The books presented in the session are

Queer in a Legal Sense: Brown Citizenship and Other Lawful Fictions (University of Texas Press, 2026)

José de la Garza Valenzuela, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Queer in a Legal Sense studies literary works by gay Chicanx writers alongside instruments of law, showing through this juxtaposition how racialized queer people have been imagined as nonviable from the standpoint of citizenship. In stories by John Rechy, Arturo Islas, Rigoberto González, Michael Nava, and Jaime Cortez, José de la Garza Valenzuela finds what has gone missing in the migrant movement’s pursuit of gendered avenues to civic participation. Queer in a Legal Sense argues that, through selective omissions and inclusions, legal fictions place queerness outside the boundaries of citizenship and powerfully undermine queer representation in pro-migrant advocacy.

Histories in Common: Native American Literatures, Extra Archives, and the Indigenous Transpacific (University of North Carolina Press, 2026)

Alyssa A. Hunziker, Boston University

Since its founding, the United States has colonized more than five hundred Indigenous nations in North America and dozens more in the Pacific and the Caribbean. In Histories in Common, I consider how American imperialism in the Pacific—typically thought of as separate from the colonization of North America—is deeply intertwined with US settler colonialism. By examining novels, poems, and archival records, I analyze literary convergences between global Indigenous communities and use an Indigenous transpacific methodology to examine how contemporary authors from Native America, Hawai'i, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and the Philippines reimagine and uncover their historical connections.

Caracoleando Among Worlds: Reconstructing Maya Worldviews in Chiapas (University of Arizona Press, 2024)

Silvia Soto, Sonoma State University

The contemporary literary movement of Maya writers of Chiapas and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) insurgency are intricately intertwined. Even as each has forged its own path, they are bound by a shared commitment to rescuing, reclaiming, and recentering Maya worldviews. This shared vision emerges in Caracoleando Among Worlds, which provides an in-depth analysis of poetry, short stories, and one of the first novels by a Maya Tsotsil writer from Chiapas, alongside close readings of the EZLN’s six declarations of the Lacandon Jungle.

The True Colors of Feeling Brown: Racialized Affect and the Poetics of Space in Latina Narratives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Natalia Villanueva-Nieves, Sonoma State University

This book examines the transnational dynamics that shape Latina affect narrative from the 1990s through the twenty-first century. Villanueva-Nieves argues that Latina narratives function as affective maps, using storytelling to chart emotional landscapes experienced differently by Mestizas, white Latinas, and Black Latinas across various historical periods and transnational territories. The analysis presented in this work demonstrates that Latina affect, as a tool for spacemaking, not only counters the dominant forces of US white supremacy but also interacts with Latin American racial ideologies, such as mestizaje and blanqueamiento.

Migrating like a Queen: Queer and Trans Migrants in Contemporary Latinx Culture (University of Texas Press, 2026)

Ruben Zecena, University of California, Davis

Migrating like a Queen highlights the joy, fabulosity, glamour, and complex desires of queer and trans Latinx migrants in the context of dehumanizing legal and representational structures. Analyzing a rich archive of twenty-first century media and literature, Zecena reveals how individuals use the imagination as a vehicle to envision a reality that pushes against the constraints of narrative tropes created by the nation-state. Engaging multiple genres and forms, from testimonio to the bildungsroman, this book is a testament to the ever-shifting cultural strategies of survival that seize power from systems of subjection.