Ariel Francisco & Lissette Lendeborg: A Conversation

Ariel Francisco is a poet, translator, and author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship and All My Heroes Are Broke. Born in the Bronx, New York, to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. In Under Capitalism If Your Head Aches They Just Yank Off Your Head (Flowersong Press), Francisco reaches into family history, Latin American history, and U.S. history to disrupt any typical understanding of what American poetry can do. From the Bronx to the Dominican Republic to Guatemala, the poems in this collection trace and retrace origins, lineages, and the missteps and fractures that complicate what it means to be a first-generation Latinx American in a country so dedicated to silencing, violence, and erasing the past.

Caitlin Villacrusis is an aspiring Filipina American poet and photojournalist. An incoming junior and communication arts major at a South Florida art school, she’s the co-president of the Creative Writing League, a photographer for The Muse, and the historian of the Asian Cultural Society. Beyond school, Villacrusis has participated in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, the Ellipsis Writing Online Workshops, and The Hellebore Press’s Issue 10 internship.

Lissette Lendeborg is a Miami-based artist, writer, and filmmaker. She is the author of the chapbook Roots (Or, This May Be Where I Came From) (Finishing Line Press), has had her prose published in Litro magazine, and her poetry published in anthologies such as Poetry Matters, Di Verse City, and Orange Island Review. Having graduated from the filmmaking conservatory of New York Film Academy, she now works to build her craft and artistry to tell stories through screenwriting as well as prose and poetry. Roots is a close look into the inner workings of a young woman on a journey of growth and self-discovery. These poems are tellings of a coming of age. With topics such as romance, heartbreak, faith, depression, and sexuality, they provide an intimate portrayal of the speaker on her journey to adulthood.