The Macondo Writers Workshop is an annual master's level summer writers workshop held in San Antonio, Texas. The workshop encourages, educates, and promotes new and published socially engaged authors and has been called "a gem of the local and national Latino literary scene." Macondo is a program of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and has been closely associated with its founder Sandra Cisneros.
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History
Macondo Writers Workshop was founded in 1995 by Sandra Cisneros. A MacArthur fellow, Cisneros wanted a workshop for writers whose work was socially engaged and who addressed the needs of underrepresented communities via their writing. The workshop, named after the sleepy town in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, began in Cisneros's dining room and was later held at Trinity University and Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. In 2011, Cisneros held a Macondo workshop in Oaxaca City, Mexico.
Mission
Cisneros has described Macondo’s mission as supporting and uniting writers “who view their work and talents as part of a larger task of community-building and non-violent social change.” The anthropologist and writer Ruth Behar has described participants as "Americans of the other America, moving between cultures, languages, classes, homelands, translating our experience for ourselves and others."
For years, the workshop was made possible by the philanthropic support of Cisneros and the Alfredo Cisneros de Moral Foundation, though currently the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas, administers and hosts the annual workshop. From 2004 to 2008, ire'ne lara silva was the Executive Coordinator for the workshop. The current director is Texas Poet Laureate Laurie Ann Guerrero. In 2016 the workshop instituted the The Macondo YOUNG Writers’ Workshop to serve high school aged writers in the San Antonio area.
Writing Faculty
Noted past faculty members have included Ai, Dorothy Allison, Julia Alvarez, Andrei Codrescu, Joy Harjo, Tim Z. Hernandez, Manuel Muñoz, Elena Poniatowska, Luis J. Rodriguez and Helena María Viramontes.
Macondistas
The term "Macondistas" refers to authors and members of the writing community who are alumni of the Macondo Writers' Workshop. Writers and poets who have attended include: Pat Alderete, Francisco Aragon, Richard Blanco, Sarah A. Chavez, Wendy Call, Denise Chavez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Carmen Giménez Smith, Jose B. Gonzalez, Reyna Grande, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Allison Hedge Coke, Joe Jimenez, Amelia M.L. Montes, Kristin Naca, Lourdes Portillo, Renato Rosaldo, Raul Salinas, Carmen Giménez Smith, Gary Soto, Ito Romo, William Sanchez, Carmen Tafolla, Carla Trujillo, Baldemar Velasquez, and Dan Vera.