Monday, October 5th, 7:30 PM at The Noe Valley
Ministry's Fellowship Hall (downstairs), 1021 Sanchez Street
Focus on La Vida from the Perspectives to Two Latina Woman, Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez and Nina Serrano
Elizabeth Martínez
Chicana feminist and a long-time community organizer, activist, author, and educator, Betita Martínez has written numerous books and
articles on different topics relating to social movements in the Americas. Her best-known work is the bilingual 500 years of Chicano
History in Pictures which later formed the basis for the educational video "¡Viva la Causa! 500 Years of Chicano History." Her work
has been hailed by Angela Y. Davis as comprising "one of the most important living histories of progressive activism in the contemporary
era ... [Martínez is] inimitable ... irrepressible ... indefatigable." In 2008 she published 500 Years of Chicana Women's History (2008)
Nina Serrano
Poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer, Nina Serrano is the author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, appearing most recently in the literary anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California (Heyday Books), and three anthologies of peace poems from Estuary Press.
Serrano has won international film awards, including the XXXIII Mostra internazionale D'Arte Cinematografica award for Que Hacer: What is to Be Done?; and the Krakow, Poland International Short Film Festival award for After the Earthquake: Despues del terremoto.
Serrano also served as an Alameda County Arts Commissioner, and is a former director of San Francisco's Poetry in the Schools program. She was a co-founder of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco's Mission District, where she is still actively involved. In addition, she is a long-time producer of radio programs on Pacifica Radio station KPFA (94.1 FM) in Berkeley, California, currently hosting La Raza Chronicles on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm..
Monday, October 19, 7 PM
Free Admission
Monday, October 19th, 7:30 PM at the Noe Valley Ministry
Fellowship Hall (downstairs),
1021 Sanchez Street
Janet Winans, poet
Janet Winans was born and raised in San Francisco, graduated from Lowell H.S. and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
She raised three children, and worked variously as a private school and summer camp director, teacher, librarian, bookmobile driver,
book seller. She relocated in Arizona where she remarried, and acquired three stepchildren and a total, at last count, of ten
grandchildren. She took an MFA degree from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and has published three chapbooks of poetry:
Our Abidance, If Summer Freezes, Of Dreams and Bones and awaits the arrival of her most recent, a larger collection
of poetry entitled Staircase of Roots. She lives in Patagonia, Arizona, where she teaches writing to adults and as an artist-in-
residence at schools and community colleges through Young Audiences and the AZ Commission on the Arts.