Carolina Rivera Escamilla
Bilingual writer, poet, actor, playwright, and documentarian, Carolina Rivera Escamilla from El Salvador is based in Los Angeles, California. Born in El Salvador, Rivera Escamilla completed a theater arts education at the Centro Nacional de Artes in the capital San Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War. Forced into exile soon after completing her secondary education, she was granted political asylum in Canada, and eventually joined family who sought refuge in Los Angeles, California. Finding her bearings, she turned into a Central American cultural promoter by writing, producing, and directing culturally relevant theatrical pieces in coffee houses, schools, libraries, and diverse performance spaces. Simultaneously pursuing higher education at UCLA, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with an emphasis in creative writing and Spanish Literature.
Continuing her work as both a writer and performer, she became a Fellow of the Pen America Emerging Voices Program and later joined USC’s Literacy Initiative. That collaboration led to the publication of a book of short stories set in the El Salvador of her childhood and adolescence entitled …after… (World Stage Press) in 2015. That same year, she was also invited to speak as a writer, cultural leader and artist to the European Parliament at the International Women’s Conference: Women for Change, Change for Women in Brussels, Belgium. In November 2019, Rivera Escamilla was invited as a poet presenter at a “gallery talk event” as a spoken word complement to the Shirin Neshat’s photography and film art exhibition at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Her English poetry collection In a Corner of Your Country appeared in early 2023, followed in early 2024 with the Spanish re-creation as En una Esquina de tu País.
Photographer: Jonathan Lane/ JL
“As a writer, I explore through my work ways to enrich themes of memory that touch economic struggle, exile, immigration, violence, and war, because these are the themes that have accompanied me since I was a child.”
Gilaine Fiezmont
Gilaine Fiezmont writes speculative fiction and wrestles with Caliope’s poetic visits when the muse makes a call. A lifelong reader of stories in many genres across four languages, she revels in the realization that humans make art and art makes us human. Creative expression is a part of our DNA; in helping us face the grief of our human existence, it helps us endure and feeds our soul.
Excerpt from collection:
Shall I light a candle
on All Soul’s
to keep you close?
No, I shall cherish this haunting.
I shall seek it out
when forgetting begins
to swallow you.
Photographer: Derek Ealy