Diana Barrera is a first generation immigrant of Colombian decent who came to the United Sates in 1993. Barrera believes bringing stories to life challenges the community to use their critical thinking skills to understand and respond to painful issues like homelessness, immigration, police brutality, etc., in an empowering way and that experiencing these issues through theater evolves human understanding. Barrera is committed to social justice though art and has collaborated extensively with other groups including Colombian Folkloric Ballet and the Romero Theater troupe (Denver, CO). Barrera hopes to share her skills, cultivated through theater training, to develop awareness in our community.

Barrera participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Crossing the Lines and Ni de aqui, ni de alla / Not from here, Not from there!

Robinson Block received his B.A. in History and Mexican American Studies from the University of Houston, and is pursuing a Masters of Social Work at the University of Houston. He is a resident of the Northside community whose background is as a historian and community organizer. Robinson has worked to document the stories of social movements in Houston, particularly Chicano and Black Power Movements. Block has helped to host a number of radical history bike tours that highlight the history of struggles in Houston. As a community coordinator with Avenue CDC and their GO Neighborhoods program in the Northside, Block has worked with civic and community organizations to improve quality of life and address public safety, housing, health, historic preservation and arts promotion.

Rob participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Marking History, Exploring Rituals, Shared Histories and Crossing the Lines.

Jimmy Castillo, photographer, resides in Houston’s Near Northside and is pursuing an MFA at the University of Houston. His work is represented in the collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Harry Ransom Center.

Castillo participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Marking History, Exploring Rituals, Shared Histories, Crossing the Lines, Close Together, and Borderlines!  Castillo also conducted an interview for Borderlines Volume One.

Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl is an Aztec dance group dedicated to preserving and nurturing the ancient Mesoamerica knowledge. Their goal is to preserve the sacred traditions left behind by our elders while sharing and exchanging cultural knowledge as a way to foster a sense of unity and constructiveness between all cultures. La Danza Azteca celebrates cultural diversity by exploring common links that bring and connect people together in a celebration of movement, art, and life.

Danza performed at VBB’s production Marking History.

Chatwara Oui Suwannamai Duran is an ethnographer and assistant professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Houston. Originally from Thailand, she received a BA in English from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. She earned a Master’s degree in Bicultural-Bilingual Studies from University of Texas at San Antonio, and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Arizona State University. She has worked, laughed, and dined with recently-resettled refugees predominantly from Burma or Myanmar in multiple US cities since 2009. Her research advocating the refugees’ voice, both children and adults, has been published and presented nationally and internationally.

Duran contributed an essay-interview for VBB’s Borderlines Volume Three.

Performance Artist Autumn Knight is a native Houstonian who received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre and Speech Communications from Dillard University and Master of Arts in Drama Therapy from New York University. She received additional acting training at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. Her community-based theater experience includes work with Cornerstone Theatre (Los Angeles) and various Houston-area organizations. Prior to pursuing a master’s degree, she was a Theatre Communications Group New Generations Fellow at Houston’s Alley Theatre. She has performed internationally with Elevator Repair Service and is a co-founder of Jelly Jar, a performance-based collective.

Knight participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Marking History and Exploring Rituals.

Deniz Dee!Colonize Lopez brings an in-your-face social commentary to the mic. Over the past 7 years, this Xicana has connected with several artists + activists to bring the message of revolution and community consciousness to the stage. She has hosted at the 1st and 2nd Annual East End Festival, and has read for and organized benefit shows and events dealing with the abolition of the death penalty, an end to police brutality, empowerment of women, immigration rights, black/brown unity, and indigenous pride. dee!colonize currently maintains a blog where she shares poetry and commentary throughout the week.

Dee!Colonize performed at VBB’s production Marking History and guest taught VBB’s community workshop.

Karen Martinez, a digital filmmaker originally from Hidalgo, Mexico, has produced many original documentaries. Martinez also created documentaries for VBB’s Borderlines project, and has been integral to the production’s series. Currently employed at SEIU Texas, Martinez is a first year graduate student at the University of Houston’s School of Art.

Martinez participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Shared Histories, Crossing the Lines, and Borderlines!

Visual Artist Robert A. Pruitt was born in Houston’s Third Ward and is a founding member of the Artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates. Pruitt creates sculptures, drawings, video, and installations about the dichotomy of the black experience in America and the impact of black cultural production on the global landscape. He has exhibited his work nationally and was a participating artist in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Pruitt is a recipient of the Artadia Award in 2004, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2008. In 2007, he was an Artpace Artist-In-Residence in San Antonio.

Pruitt participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Marking History and Exploring Rituals, which he co-curated with Sehba Sarwar.

Bruno Ríos (Hermosillo, Sonora, México 1988) is a poet, novelist, editor, translator and PhD candidate at the Department of Hispanic Studies of the University of Houston. He is the author of several poetry books and the novel La voz de las abejas (Sediento Ediciones, 2016). He has been published in numerous magazines and journals in the United States, Mexico, and several countries in Latin America. His work explores the intersections between poetry and politics in the last 30 years, as well as topics including the discourse of violence and the regional implications of the border in recent Mexican poetry, film, and photography.

Rios contributed poetry toward VBB’s Borderlines Volume Three

Harbeer Sandhu is a writer of fiction, poetry and criticism. In 2012,  Sandhu received a Creative Capital I grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Writers Program to launch texphrastic.com, a blog covering Texas visual art in a global context. He earned a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco, California.

Sandhu participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Marking History and Exploring Rituals. He also contributed an essay and images for Borderlines Volume Two.

Bapsi Sidhwa is an internationally acclaimed author who was raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and now lives in Houston, Texas. She graduated from Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore. Her five novels, Cracking India, The Pakistani Bride, The Crow Eaters, An American Brat, and Water, have been translated and published in several languages. Her anthology, City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore was published in 2006.

Sidhwa contributed an essay for Borderlines Volume One.

Christina L. Sisk, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. Her areas of interest are U.S. Latina/o Studies, US-Mexico Border Studies, Mexican Literary and Cultural Studies, and Latin American Cinema. She is the author of Mexico, Nation in Transit: Contemporary Representations of Mexican Migration to the United States (University of Arizona Press, Fall 2011), which explores the topic of migration from a transnational approach that includes analyses of Mexican border film, la literatura de la frontera, Mexican rock music, migrant narratives, Hollywood films made by Mexican directors, and texts written by second- and third-generation immigrants.

Sisk interviewed ASARO for Borderlines Volume Two.

Shreerekha Subramanian, PhD, is an associate professor of humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Texas, who teaches global literary and philosophical texts to undergraduate and graduate students. She publishes scholarships across Comparative and Cultural Studies and just completed her first monograph, Women Writing Violence: The Novel and Radical Feminist Imaginaries (Sage 2012). Her path to the academy is circuitous and nurtured through a Master’s of Fine Arts in Poetry from Syracuse University. She hopes the muse returns intermittently to sustain her relationship to that most elusive and profound realm of the written word, the poem.

Subramanian contributed poetry for Borderlines Volume Two.

Samhita Sunya has been an apprentice to Houston-based Hindustani classical musicians Chandrakantha and David Courtney for nearly two decades, studying and performing both voice and dilruba. With the Courtneys, Sunya has performed for several organizations and venues in the Greater Houston area, including: Rothko Chapel, Da Camera, Houston International Festival, Houston Grand Opera, The Artery / Artery Media Project, Discovery Green Park, and Asia Society Texas.

Sunya participated as an artist for Crossing the Lines.

M’kina Tapscott is a Houston native whose work is informed by a desire to teach and create. Tapscott’s sculpture and installation work has become a platform to speak about the correlation between humanity and the vast and evolving universe. As a community based artist Tapscott creates work that utilizes aspects of popular culture, social constructs, and historical accounts to critique life in the 21st century and beyond.

Tapscott participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Exploring Rituals.

Sukhada Tatke is a freelance reporter and writer based in Houston, TX. While in India, she was a staff writer at the newspapers The Times of India and The Hindu. As a freelancer, she has contributed to The Wire, Scroll, Caravan, Texas Monthly, The Establishment, and others.

Tatke interviewed artist Veer Munshi and journalist Fahad Khan for Borderlines Volume Three.

Roberto Tejada is author of the poetry collections Full Foreground (Arizona, 2012), Exposition Park (Wesleyan, 2010), Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), and Todo en el ahora (Libros Magenta, 2015). Co-editor of the multi-lingual journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, and a visual scholar, he has published National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (Minnesota, 2009), A Ver: Celia Alvarez Muñoz (Minnesota, 2009), and essays on photographers Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Graciela Iturbide, and Luis Gispert.  He is faculty at the University of Houston where he teaches in the Creative Writing Program and Art History Department.

Tejada contributed translations for Bruno Rios’ poetry in Borderlines Volume Three.

Monica Villarreal is an interdisciplinary Xicana artist and activist. Her art focuses on social change, gender equality, and environmental issues. She has multiple awards in photography and filmmaking and is a traditional Aztec dancer with Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl. She’s also a founding member of Creative Women Unite, a feminist art collaborative, and has over nine years of experience organizing with non-profit and grassroots organizations. Currently completing her graduate in Digital Media Studies at University of Houston-Clear Lake with a focus on graphic design and printmaking, Villarreal is a part of Project Row House’s Round 41.

Villarreal participated as an artist and a member of VBB’s artist core group for Marking History (which she curated), Exploring Rituals, Shared Histories, Crossing the Lines,Close Together and Borderlines! Villarreal also interviewed Daniel Bustamante for Borderlines Volume One.

Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal is a Generation 1.5 poet (Mexicana and Chicana) and translator. She has published various translations, including Enigmas, by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Señal: a project of Libros Antena Books, BOMB, and Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015). The focus of her translations is the work by regiomontana poet Minerva Reynosa—a chapbook, an excerpt from Photograms of My Conceptual Heart, Absolutely Blind, is forthcoming (Cardboard House Press). She received a MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. She is an instructor at Houston Community College and a PhD student at University of Houston.

Villarreal interviewed Minerva Reynosa and translated her work for Borderlines Volume Three.

Gemini Wahhaj is associate professor of English at Lone Star College, North Harris Campus. She is a graduate of the PhD program in creative writing and literature at University of Houston. Her fiction has been published in Granta, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Night Train, Carolina Quarterly, Northwest Review, Apogee, Chattahoochee Review, Silk Road, and other magazines.  An excerpt from her YA novel was published in Gothic Volume 5.

Wahhaj contributed an essay for Borderlines Volume Three.

Charisse Weston holds a masters degree from the University of Edinburgh and BA from the University of North Texas. Her work focuses on how individuals construct personal myths or narratives of Self-hood. Weston is concerned with the dichotomies of Self/Others, Subject/ Object, Individual/Community and is interested in exploring the continual oscillation we as human beings experience between these dichotomies as we relate to time and space. Weston has performed or exhibited her work in Houston spaces, including DiverseWorks, the Glassell School of Art, Midtown Art Center, the Jung Center Houston, Project Row Houses and the Houston Fine Arts Fair 2014.

Members of the Punjabi Cultural Society performed during Exploring Rituals.