“CANCELLED: We regret to inform you that the 2022 Anaya Lecture has been cancelled upon the request of the speaker. Please join us for a film screening of Carl Franklin’s Bless Me, Ultima at the NHCC on Sept. 30 with a pre-lecture introduction by Dr. Gabriel Meléndez. Reception at 6pm, pre-lecture introduction at 6:30, and film screening at 7pm. The film screening is in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima. Free ticketed event; visit https://nhccdev.wpengine.com/event/film-bless-me-ultima/.”

7:00 pm

Join us for the the 2022 Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest, featuring New York Times bestselling author Erika L. Sánchez. This program is in collaboration with the University of New Mexico’s English Department.

The English Department is excited to host Sánchez as this year’s featured speaker in the annual lecture series that Mr. Anaya established. Sánchez is a Lobo alumna and graduate of the English Department’s MFA program, and she penned the foreword to the Penguin Vitae fiftieth anniversary edition of Anaya’s canonical novel, Bless Me, Ultima. 

Please register for this event here or call the NHCC Welcome Center at 505-724-4771 for assistance.

Sánchez, a Lobo alumna, is a Mexican-American poet, novelist, and essayist whose work pays tribute to Anaya’s novel and its significance to Southwest literature and culture.

Sánchez’s debut poetry collection, Lessons in Expulsion (Graywolf Press 2017) was released alongside her Young Adult novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf 2017), a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. The novel also won the 2018 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award for Older Readers, and it is currently in production to become a feature film. Her third book, Crying in the Bathroom: A Memoir, was just released to critical acclaim (Viking 2022). Sánchez’s poems have appeared in Poets.org, Vinyl Poetry, Guernica, diode, Boston Review, Paris Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine, and her non-fiction in Al Jazeera, ESPN.com, the Guardian, NBC News, Rolling Stone, Salon, and Cosmopolitan for Latinas, where she was the sex and love advice columnist.