Viva Padilla

Bookstores that Make the Neighborhood, Sunday, May 5, 3:30-4:30pm, Mountain View Mausoleum

Viva Padilla, a first-generation Chicana daughter of immigrants from Colima, Mexico, is a bilingual poet, translator, writer, editor, and publisher, art curator, and bookstore, and print shop owner. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, she is the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Libro Abierto Press, the journal sin cesar (formerly Dryland), and Hombre Lobo, an intergenerational book series which mines little explored literary turf of the best paranormal/supernatural written in the time-worn Xicanx tradition of dark cautionary folk tales. Re/Arte Centro Literario, the bookshop, performance venue, art gallery, and independent print shop she opened in Boyle Heights has been the subject of articles in the LA Times, on KCET, L.A. Taco, Thrillist and Cultural Daily.

Padilla’s poetry has been published in Brooklyn & Boyle, Pank Magazine, and Sand, Berlin’s vaunted literary magazine, The Acentos Review and in Coiled Serpent among others. As a speaker, panelist and poet, she has presented at the illustrious Casa de las Américas in Cuba, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Casa del Libro en Monterrey, Instituto Potosino de Bellas Artes, Museo de Arte e Historia de Guanajuato, the LA Theater Center, AWP (Seattle, 2023) and many others. She currently serves as a royalties liaison at Tia Chucha Press and makes her home on L.A.’s Eastside.
She is the author of INSUMISA (Libro Abierto Press, 2023), a hybrid collection of bilingual-literate poems, auto-fiction, visuals, and haikus.