Bio: Angelica Maria

Angélica Maria is a Chicana writer & musician from the San Fernando Valley, CA. She was a finalist of the National Poetry Slam 2017 amongst the top 400 competing poets within the U.S, Australia and Canada. She also ranked in the top 10 of women poets in the country in 2019 for the Women of the World Poetry Slam.

Her work focuses on telling stories that illuminate both the historic and current power of latinas in literature & music. Through this work, she introduces poetry & music as powerful tools to reclaim our stories and heal. Her work has been featured on Button Poetry, Tedx, Facebook, and in 2021 she was hired to write the first Spanglish poem for a national sports team. The campaign aired on national television for The USL Women’s Soccer League’s National Campaign, in collaboration with Puma.

Angelica’s work has been published in renowned anthologies such as “The Breakbeat Poets: LatiNEXT 2020” on Haymarket Press, “The Latinx Poetry Project” on Alegria Publishing, & “Poem For Girls Becoming Themselves” on Workman Publishing. Angelica has presented her music & poetry at over 100 universities and venues across and outside the U.S, including Harvard, Yale, and The National Art Museum of Mexico City. Her most recent endeavor is “Palo Santo” a poetic music project produced by all Mexican composers and musicians in Mexico City.

Angelica has spoken at many Colleges and Universities nationwide, and was a presenter at NCORE 2022, sharing her workshop “Say My Name.”

Workshops:

Say My Name

How do we say our names? or better yet, what do our names say about us?  Why is it so accepted for society to alter and muddle our names for convenience? What does this say about history, language and assimilation? In America there is a negative stigma attached to names rich with accents and rolled letters. They are in constant danger of being silenced, and butchered. In this workshop, writers learn to reclaim the power of their names by first looking at their origins and meanings. From here, writers begin to see their birth title not as a burden but a badge of honor.

Speak Up & Speak Out | Take Back The Night 

In this program, poetry and storytelling are used to empower students to speak up and speakout against sexual assault. The main goal of this program is to uplift the voices of survivors and raise awareness about sexual violence.

In a world, where silence allows sexual assault to prevail, telling our own stories is an extremely powerful act. As students share their stories, and listen to other people share theirs, they are working to create a safer space for all of us to exist and better understand how to prevent this problem in the future.

A Pledge To the Body

People of color carry centuries of colonization, shame, and violence in our bodies. Latinas at an early age become hyper sexualized in society. We are either fetishized or shamed for our style of dress, our hair, or our hips. Women are accustomed to hating some part of ourselves, a terrifying 91% of us as a matter of fact. It is our job as women, to rewrite this narrative. Often we think of a pledge as a written allegiance to our country, however it is about time we began writing them to ourselves. In this workshop, writers identify a part of their bodies they have always been taught to hate and write a dedication to it. Through this process, writers can uproot shame and become patriots of their own skin.

Becoming The Artist Of Your Life

All of us have desires, dreams that pull us towards certain passions, ideas, places. However, we are taught that it’s illogical to follow these dreams if they do not instantly generate income.

As an internationally touring artist that came from a low income Mexican household in Los Angeles, Angelica Maria shares her truths and insights that allowed her to create the life of her dreams.

In this Artist of Life workshop, students will look profoundly at what their deepest passions are, and ask themselves the right questions to turn

these ideas into reality. As a Tedx presenter, Angelica has worked for Facebook, and been published in countless literary magazines and journals in her career. Amongst all these experiences, she has collected a repertoire of resources and strategies under her belt to help any creative manifest their passion into their living. As college is a difficult, confusing time for many, this workshop gives students concrete strategies and reflection prompts to turn what they truly love into their future, to truly become the artist of their own life.

The Divine Feminine Poetry Workshop

Feminine energy is connected with fertility, but again, doesn’t need to be reduced to human reproduction. Growth, whether it’s spiritual, physical, or emotional, celebrates a feminine energy in that we give life to something that was not there before. (Funny enough, many of the teachings we receive are that women ought to be chaste and pure, rather than abundant and fertile, a line of teaching that can be assigned specifically to a patriarchal belief system with the purpose of denying women and femininity of their power.)

In this workshop, attendees will explore & discover where their real power lies, using writing & spoken word as tools. Expression, and sharing is inherently feminine, the point of this workshop is to unveil, to re-connect & discover a power we all already possess.

Knowing once we leave, we can always tap back into this energy at any time.