Be part of a conversation with the 'New Philadelphia' — the millennials & communities of color driving the growth in our city

Join AL DÍA News Media for this unique conversation leading up to the 2015 Philadelphia Mayoral Race!

This conversation will break the wall between the candidates, the media, and the public. The mayoral candidates will converse with a selection of the city’s leading journalists in front of a diverse audience. The candidates will field questions primarily from the journalists, but also from the audience, who will submit questions for the candidates via Twitter during the event.

Featured journalists will include:
Solomon Jones (900AM WURD)
Shai Ben-Yaacov (WHYY)
Helen Ubiñas (Philadelphia Daily News)
Steve Bo-Le Yuan (Metro Chinese Weekly)
Chris Krewson (Billy Penn)
Ana Gamboa (AL DÍA News)

Moderated by AL DÍA News’ Managing Editor, Sabrina Vourvoulias

This event will highlight the lack of representation for diverse communities in Philadelphia, touching upon the disconnect between City Hall and the public.

If you’re a Philadelphian, join our audience and participate in this one-of-a-kind opportunity to let your voice be heard in front of our city’s next mayor.

This event will take place at Pipeline Philly, a multi-purpose open workspace, located across the street from City Hall.

A networking reception will take place from 5-6pm. Fruit, cheese, wine and beer will be served. The conversation will begin at 6pm.

Dynamic discussion, networking possibilities, City Hall, and the candidates: Become part of the evening that will help shape the 2015 Philadelphia mayoral race!

The following candidates have confirmed participation: Douglas Oliver, Anthony Hardy Williams, Nelson Diaz, Lynne Abraham, Jim Kenney, and Milton Street

#ALDIALive

AL DÍA News Media is a dynamic news organization based in Philadelphia, with an increasingly national scope and reach. Our multi-platform news media organization showcases the fullness of the Latino experience in the United States — fostering engagement and driving a new American narrative.

In 2014, the company relaunched its website with a focus on bilingual national content generation without sacrificing the depth of its local coverage.

ICYMI: I wrote about Latino/a Speculative fiction at Tor.com (#SFWAPro)

Putting the I in Speculative: Looking at U.S. Latino/a Writers and Stories

Spanish designates the letter Y as “i-griega”—literally, the Greek i—to mark its difference from the letter I, which Spanish-speakers understand to be from the Latin even when we don’t say “i-latina” as we recite the alphabet. In choosing the title for this blog post, I reveled a bit—as only a bilingual language nerd can—in the hidden layer of significance I could give that not-so-simple I.


Until the end of July 2014, if you looked at the Wikipedia entry for “speculative fiction by writers of color” and scrolled down past the lists of African and African-American writers, Asian and Asian-American writers, etc., to the category for “Latino writers” you saw no list, just one line: “see Magical Realism.”


To add insult to injury, if you happened to click on that “see Magic Realism” link, you were taken to a list of Latin American writers of the speculative, with not a single U.S. Latino/a representative among them.


The Wikipedia entry no longer looks like it did in July, because Matthew Goodwin, a comparative literature professor and editor of the upcoming speculative fiction anthology Latino/a Rising (Restless Books, 2016), added an entry for U.S. Latino speculative fiction writers. But the omission he corrected is emblematic. The U.S. Latino/a speculative fiction writer is largely invisible to the speculative mainstream editor, publisher, reviewer and anthologist....


The thing is, to experience the tradition and sheer range of U.S. Latin@ speculative writing, you have to venture out of the usual neighborhoods and cross into the liminal borderland between genres; into the barrios of small press and website; and onto momentarily unfamiliar streets....


Let me introduce you to a few Latino/a authors whose stories you may not have read, and show you around some of the (perhaps unfamiliar) markets that have published their work.


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