Checking in with Letras Caseras

Letras Caseras, when translated, means letters from home.  My hope is that artists will share their work with Letras Caseras and LC can then share it with the rest of the artist community in a way that feels like the art (poetry, fiction, photography, art, reviews, interviews, etc) is coming from home.

Kaffe in Kathmandu is a Tumblr like LC, that Marcus Speh administered.  He had a sizeable following of artists from all walks of life and from all over the globe that shared their work on the site.  I was one of them and I really enjoyed immersing myself in those works and enjoyed the variety that Kaffe in Kathmandu had to offer.  Marcus shut the site down at the end of December 2011 so I spoke to him about trying to keep that environment alive.  I started Letras Caseras and Marcus has been extremely helpful and supportive.

I hope to continue providing another space for artists to share their work with each other and everyone else.  Also, to engage an international community with members from all over the world, that’s imperative.

The role is to engage the political directly in fresh and different ways and by choice.  I don’t only post what are considered political pieces but I enjoy them when I get them as long as they aren’t didactic or preachy.

Recently, in an interview for The Paris Review, playwright August Wilson said that “All art is political in the sense that it serves someone’s politics.”  So whether a writer thinks he/she is writing politically or not they are expressing their position of apathy or engagement by what they do or don’t create artistically.  I believe that in a perfect world artists would apply some degree of social pressure to the academic world and to the world of governments.

I’m sure you like everything that has run, but will you share some of your favorite pieces with us?

“The Burka” by Sylvia Petter is really good, “In Paran” by Larissa Shmailo also fantastic, there are several short films I’ve re-blogged that I love, photography, and “Pitspits” by J. Mykell Collinz is another great one. It’s very hard to narrow down just a few. Those have been some favorites by fellow Fictionauts. There are some recent additions which are awesome as well from the likes of J.A. Pak, Jerry Ratch and Gessy Alvarez. I’ve also enjoyed re-blogging work from Denise Menendez’ Poets and Artists site.

My plan for Letras Caseras is to keep it in its present form for now.  Maybe, and this is a couple years off, I’ll turn it into a lit journal or review.  However, that’s not something I have the time to entertain right now.

I don’t have a formula or preference for contributions to LC.  I enjoy work that engages the issues in fresh and creative ways but that’s not the only thing I will post to the site.  Engaging work, regardless of its subject matter, deserves to be shared.

The Fictionaut group functions as another group within Fictionaut for writers to share their work with writers. Yes the work can/should follow along the lines of the group’s aim but most importantly it is about Fictionaut’s mission of community. I’ll grab a piece from the group sometimes but if anyone has something to submit the best way to do it is via the Tumblr itself. There’s a little cog in the top left corner, clicking on it opens a small menu where the submit icon is.