Letras Latinas is the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), with an office on campus in South Bend, Indiana, as well as Washington, D.C.
[5] Books in this series include These Days of Candy by Manuel Paul Lopez, You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior by Carolina Ebeid, lo teaciario/the tertiary by Roque Salas Rivera, and Beast Meridian by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, among others.
[6] The project is a collaborative effort with the ILS librarian/archivist and produces video interviews of Latino writers visiting the Notre Dame campus with the aim of making them available as an online resource for students, scholars, and the community at large.
Recorded writers include William Archila, Richard Blanco, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Martín Espada, Valerie Martinez, Naomi Ayala, Brenda Cárdenas, Salvador Plascencia, Barbara Jane Reyes, Maria Melendez, Daniel Alarcón, John Phillip Santos, and many others.
Writers recorded in the Spotlight series include Richard Blanco, Eduardo C. Corral, Carmen Giménez Smith, Rigoberto González, and Valerie Martínez.
A joint effort with the Center for Women's InterCultural Leadership (CWIL) at Saint Mary's, the project was funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
The destinations were: Palm Beach, FL, Minneapolis, MN, Seattle, WA, Berkeley, CA, Chicago, IL, Kansas City, MO, and New York, NY.
The Wind Shifts Tour (2008, 2009) A partnership with the Guild Complex (2006 – 2012), a community-based literary organization in Chicago, Palabra Pura is a Letras Latinas outreach program whose aim is to present the work, in live performance, of Latino poets from around the United States.
The project was a collaboration between Letras Latinas and Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago and the Young Writers Workshop at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
The initiative offered a five-day program designed to give high school students the chance to explore and develop their talents in poetry and prose writing.
It eventually honed its mission of publishing new chapbook-length works by Latino authors including Brenda Cárdenas, Steven Cordova, Lisa Gonzales, Kevin A. González, Scott Inguito, Aaron Michael Morales, Michelle Otero,[10] Paul Martínez Pompa, and, Robert Vasquez.
[11] Letras Latinas Blog was an online site featuring e-interviews, book review round-ups, and other forms of literary commentary on contemporary Latino literature.
The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, in collaboration with University of Notre Dame Press, supported the publication of a first book by a Latino poet in the United States.