Three Questions by Daniel Olivas: Menes and Huerta

By Daniel A. OlivasSeptember 24, 2013

DANIEL OLIVAS has built a formidable library of interviews for LARB: Sandra Cisneros, Rudolfo Anaya, Mario Alberto Zambrano, Reyna Grande, Manuel Ramos, Alex Espinosa, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Melinda Palacios, Justin Torres, Rubén Martínez, and now two very different kinds of writers, one a poet, the other an interdisciplinary scholar, both of whom are asked a set of only three questions.

Orlando Ricardo Menes was born in Perú to Cuban parents but has lived most of his life in the United States. Since 2000 he has taught in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. His newest poetry collection, Fetish, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Menes is also the author of Furia (2005) and Rumba Atop the Stones (2001). In addition, he has edited two anthologies of poetry: The Open Light: Poets from Notre Dame, 1991-2008 (2011) and Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred (2004). Menes has also published numerous translations of poetry in Spanish. [Go to interview]

Dr. Alvaro Huerta is a Visiting Scholar at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center. As an interdisciplinary scholar, he conducts research and teaches on various fields, including urban planning / community development, civic engagement / community organizing, immigration, Chicana/o--Latina/o studies / history, social network analysis & the informal economy. Currently, he's working on a series of scholarly articles for top-tier academic journals related to his research interests. Raised in East Los Angeles' notorious Ramona Gardens housing project, Dr. Huerta is the product of public schools, from the inner-city public schools of LAUSD to elite universities at UC. [Go to interview]

LARB Contributor

Daniel Olivas, a second-generation Angeleno, is a playwright and the author of 10 books including, most recently, How to Date a Flying Mexican: New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press, 2022), and Crossing the Border: Collected Poems (Pact Press, 2017). He is the editor of the anthology Latinos in Lotusland (Bilingual Press, 2008), and co-editor of The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles (Tía Chucha Press, 2016). His first full-length play, Waiting for Godínez, was selected for the Playwrights’ Arena Summer Reading Series, and The Road Theatre’s 12th Annual Summer Playwrights Festival, and was a Semi-Finalist for the American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Playwriting Award. Widely anthologized, he has also written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Alta Journal, Jewish Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, La Bloga, and many other print and online publications. By day, Olivas is an attorney in the Public Rights Division of the California Department of Justice. He and his wife make their home in Southern California, and they have an adult son.

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