Ceiba ili’s ME FUI EN SILENCIO Austin Book Launch

About this event

Join us for an evening of celebrating Ceiba ili’s debut poetry chapbook, me fui en silencio , winner of the 2026 Plancha Press Chapbook Prize.

Performances by poets Maxochitl Cortez, Mandy Lynn, Joyous Windrider Jimenez, and Johnny Rivers.

CEIBA’S ARTIST/AUTHOR’S STATEMENT

Me fui en silencio is a work that gathers fragments of my memory, grief, and resilience that moves across all fronteras with me. It is written in the language of departure and regreso, silencio and survival. Migration is not only the movement of my body, it is the stories, and pain carried in secret, the grief that lives alongside hope.

These poems and stories refuse the “american dream,” that ugly capitalist sleepless nightmare that so many of us and our families get trapped in. They also speak to the complexity of home: Latin America, a land still ravaged by imperialism and missionaries who force their religions onto indigenous peoples.

My writings speak from the janitor closet, abuelita’s chanclas, the homes left behind and the uncertain ones ahead. They honor the voices that cannot and will not live this experience unseen and unheard; the immigrants that refuse to let others own our narrative through their grants, their news, their hate and ignorance.

From Infrarrealista Review