Rough Nights is a reading series created by Raspa Magazine in attempt to connect our audience and featured authors in way that extends past the page. We believe that through increased visibility and access the relationship between audience and authors can grow moreintimate and help spur understanding amongst ourselves as peers and for those outside our community.

Featuring:

Mónica Teresa Ortiz 
Charlie Vasquez
Heidi Andrea Restrepo
Dan Vera

Raspa Magazine is a response to the paucity of queer Latino literature readily available to readers. It is a biannual queer literary magazine that focuses on the Latino perspective. Raspa intends to showcase the experience of queer Latino artists, thereby providing a better understanding for ourselves as peers and for those outside of our community. Raspa Magazine was started in Austin, Texas by César Ramos in the fall of 2012.

Mónica Teresa Ortiz is a writer and native Texan based in Austin. She holds a B.A. from UT-Austin, an MFA from UT-El Paso, and a chapbook called On a Greyhound Straight from the 915. Her work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Huizache, Pilgrimage Magazine, Paso del Rio Grande del Norte, Borderlands, As/US, The Texas Observer, Autostraddle and Black Girl Dangerous. A two-time Andres Montoya Letras Latinxs Poetry prize finalist

Charlie Vasquez is a queer Bronx-born writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican decent and author of the novels, Buzz and Israel, and Contraband. He has edited two anthologies of Latino literature The Best of PANIC! (Fire King, 2010) and From Macho to Mariposa (Lethe, 2011) with author Charles Rice-González. Charlie is the director of the Bronx Writers Center and is the New York City coordinator for Puerto Rico’s “Festival de la Palabra”. He currently resides in the Bronx.

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes is a feminist, second generation Colombian immigrant, writer and political activist. Committed to the arts as a practice of creative justice and community healing. Much of her work seeks to act as social documentation, as well as provocation. Her creative writing has been or is forthcoming in Wilde, The Progressive, Yellow Medicine Review, 2014 National Queer Arts Festival, and Nepantla. She currently resides in Brooklyn.  

Dan Vera is a writer, editor, and literary historian living in Washington, DC. He is the author of two poetry collections: Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen, 2013), the inaugural winner of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books, 2008). His poetry has been included in the writing curricula at colleges and universities and has appeared in various journals, including Notre Dame Review,Delaware Poetry Review, Gargoyle, and Little Patuxent Review, in addition to the anthologies Queer South, Divining Divas, and Full Moon On K Street. Named a 2014 Top Ten “New” Latino Author to Watch (and Read) by LatinoStories.com, he’s edited the gay culture journal White Crane, co-created the literary history site, DC Writers’ Homes, and chairs the board of Split This Rock Poetry.

Our Name

The title Raspa was carefully chosen for its linguistic significance. The word itself is reflective of the progression of the Spanish language. It is an integration of formal Spanish and colloquial speech. Through colloquial usage the traditional word raspar, which means “to scrape,” has morphed into raspa, the rainbow-colored shaved ice many of us grew up enjoying on hot summer days. It is from this current colloquial usage that Raspa draws its visual connotation: The rainbow-colored ice resembles the diversity symbol of the pride flag, and the cone suggests the inverted triangle that was once used to mark homosexual internment camp victims and is now being reclaimed as a symbol of pride and gay rights.