The Light of Your Body

“A collection of lyrical and rhapsodic stories wrought from dreams, history, spirituality and erotic longing”

ire’ne lara silva’s stories are rooted in mythical realism, in liminal spaces that don’t differentiate the voices of the dead from those of the living, that navigate borders and borderless places fearlessly to bring us the stories of gods, mortals and animals. An extraterrestrial relates an eyewitness account of Malinche and the Conquest. Santísma Muerte opens a taco truck in Austin and finds love.  A woman blinded by hummingbirds and distracted by multiple lovers struggles to find her purpose.
This reading is in collaboration with the Hays Youth Poet Laureate Celebration (where silva will give a second reading) and Infrarrealista Review, a multilingual literary collective, journal, press, and educational organization who created the youth writing workshop and book contest.   The book contest offers a cash prize of $1000 and run of 100 copies of the new youth poet laureate’s book to be announced by Carrie Fountain, 2019 Texas Poet Laureate, at the Price Center on April 4th. For more information or to register for the workshops, visit Infrarrealista Review.

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers, which won Gold for the 2025 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book (ILBA), a comic book, VENDAVAL, and two short story collections, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán, and the light of your body. ire’ne is the recipient of the ILBA 2025 Rising Stars Poetry Award, a 2025 Storyknife Writers Residency, the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award.  Visit her personal website for more information.