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 Playwright/Director Tammy GomezAs a Mexican-American Texas-born writer, performance artist, and media producer, Tammy Gomez has over 20 years of experience in producing, directing, and hosting literary performance events for the stage and live audiences, and has worked with over 300 artist/writers in collaborative contexts. She curated the Poetry Tent readings for the Texas Book Festival at the State Capitol for six years. Tammy has studied poetics with renowned award-winning writers Arthur Sze, Ann Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and Lorna Dee Cervantes. During the 1990s, her spoken word band “La Palabra” enjoyed wide acclaim, as they took poetry to pubs, art galleries, and South by Southwest. Tammy has also been a performing member of such collectives as the Red Salmon Poets, the Blue Plate Poets, Dharma Broads, WOW (Women of Words), and Yoniverse (the latter which she founded and published). Her audiences and sites of production have ranged from social justice and women’s advocacy organizations (Texas Association against Sexual Assault and the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center) to media production centers (WATER House, KO.OP Radio, and Austin Free-Net). For KO.OP Radio, Tammy produced the weekly women’s magazine “Notes from a Broad” for five years. Her work often touches on themes of ecofeminism, spiritual strength in the face of adversity, and cross-cultural hybridity. She advocates for the growth of cultural literacy and appreciation of literature by publishing Texas writers (IN A LOUD KITCHEN, 1998, and NORTH TEXAS NERUDA LOVE, 2005) as a small press publisher (Tejana Tongue Press). She has specifically sought to unify, mentor, and empower diverse communities (particularly women and youth) in Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Santa Fe, Dallas, and Fort Worth since 1988. As an award-winning ("Best Poet of Austin" and "1st Runner-Up, Hispanic Playwright's Festival of Fort Worth") poet and playwright, Tammy has performed her work in 10 U.S. states, and abroad in Mexico and Nepal. The Guild Complex (Chicago), Wellesley College, and Galeria de la Raza (San Francisco) are but a few of the places she has been invited to perform as a featured artist. Tammy is also featured in the award-winning PBS documentary "Voices from Texas", about Chicano Texas poets. As “cutting edge” artist and “avant-garde” Chicana writer (as quoted by critics and the press, as well as the Chicano/a literary vanguard), Tammy very much wants to bring performance innovations and national attention to Texas as a place where creative literary excellence abounds. In Fort Worth, Tammy has brought multimedia elements to the performance of literature--an exciting and bold evolution in the presentation of poetry and spoken word. Two recent examples of such programming include the “Besitos Para Ti” (2003) Valentine’s Day poetry concert and the multimedia spoken word tribute “Siempre, Neruda” (2003)--based on poetry by Pablo Neruda--both of which premiered in Fort Worth. As artistic coordinator and director of such spoken word/poetry programs, Tammy draws upon her familiarity with new trends and experimental genres which have not yet been presented in Texas. Currently based in North Texas, Tammy has been recently published in TERRA FIRMA (Agave Noir Press: Austin) and BICYCLE LOVE (Breakaway Books: New York). Her work also appears in the groundbreaking anthology HECHO EN TEJAS (University of New Mexico Press), and she has poems forthcoming in NEWBORDER: An Anthology of Texas/Mexico Border Writing (Texas A&M Press), THE BEATEST STATE IN THE UNION: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writers (UT Press), and the "What's In A Nombre?" issue of PHATI'TUDE. More information at: http://www.usaprojects.org/user/tammygomez |
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