The Writing Generation Series: Reading with Rowena Alegría

This is an SFCC event jointly sponsored by the SFCC Creative Writing program and the SFCC library.

Participants only need to register once and will be registered for every event in the series.
Register: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WriGenFall2025

All sessions will take place online and the URL for each session will be sent out the morning of each event. The events are free and are open to anyone who would like to attend.

September 17 & 24, 2025
Reading & Creative Session with Rowena Alegría

Rowena Alegría Artist Statement

Adopted at birth, inheritance and identity fascinate me. I knew the woman who gave me light only in the sharing of fluids and nutrients. For nine months, I experienced her tears, her rabia, her indecision. I heard her words in languages I would learn long afterward. I imagine her intimations wait like timed bombs in my consciousness and go off as whispered intuition. From her, I inherited a love of learning and a passion for words and justice. Surrendered at birth, I marvel at how I know so little of her in artifact or experience, as she walked on before my search, but how so much of her – learned from her poems and dissertation, from her survivors, those who loved her but didn’t know her well enough to know I existed – survives in my genes.

My work in progress, a novel titled “500 Springs,” takes a particular interest in these ideas coupled with the legacy of colonialism on the indigenous and mestizo peoples of what is now Mexico and the southwestern United States, which includes my home state of Colorado. The novel explores the potential of souls carrying over generations the unresolved pain of the past as well as unfulfilled love and promises.

Read more: http://www.RowenaAlegria.com