Claudia Gizell Aparicio-Gamundi was born and raised in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. She received her Associate’s Degree in Visual Communications and currently is the in house Graphic Designer at Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Texas. She is also one third of Puro Chingón Collective and Volunteer Director for AIGA, the professional association for design, Austin chapter. Her design work has been featured in Cosmopolitan Latina, Austin American Statesman, The Austin Chronicle, Treasure City Thrift, Worker’s Defense Project, Austin Film Society, and Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre. She recently completed the design of a retrospective publication of works by Austin artist Steve Brudniak. 

Joseph Delgado was born and raised on the banks of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work has appeared in several magazines and anthologized in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011). His work will also appear in the forthcoming Joto: Queer Chicano Poets from Korima Press. He is the author of Ditch Water: Poems (Korima Press, 2013). Joseph makes his home in the heat of the desert in Mohave Valley, Arizona.

Lauren Espinoza  is an inaugural member of the Letras Latinas Poets Initiative, the Workshop Assistant for CantoMundo, a Teaching Artist with Badgerdog, and a graduate student in the M.F.A. Program in Poetry at Arizona State University. Her poetry has appeared in Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25, New Border Voices: An Anthology, The Mas Tequila Review, The Acentos Review, As/Us, and Souvenir. 

Raquel Gutiérrez is a writer, live performer, film actor, curator, playwright, and cultural organizer. She writes on art, culture, music, film, performance and community building and creates original solo and ensemble performance compositions. Raquel earned her MA in Performance Studies from New York University in 2004. She was a co-founding member of the now retired performance ensemble, Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP), a community-based and activist-minded group aimed at creating a visual vernacular around queer Latinidad in Los Angeles. Raquel's work has been published in The Portland Review and Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano).

Charlie Vázquez is a queer Bronx-born writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent and author of the novels, Buzz and Israel, and Contraband. He has edited two anthologies of Latino literature: The Best of PANIC! (Fire King, 2010), which was based on his breakthrough East Village reading series (2008-2011), and From Macho to Mariposa (Lethe, 2011) with author and cultural producer Charles Rice-González. Charlie is the director of the Bronx Writers Center and is the New York City coordinator for Puerto Rico’s “Festival de la Palabra”. He lives in the Bronx.

Claudia Zapata is an art historian and Curator of Exhibitions and Programs at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Texas. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas in Art History, specializing in Pre -Columbian and U.S. Latino/Chicano art.  Her recent projects include the co-founding of ChingoZine, a Latino art zine, and the Latino art collective, Puro Chingón Collective.  Zapata has curated over a dozen exhibitions at the Mexic-Arte Museum ranging from subjects such as the commercialization of the Day of the Dead holiday, Mexican dance masks, and lucha libre in popular culture. Her most recent publication acted as the main catalog essay for Margarita Cabrera’s Uprooted Dreams, a recent Art in Public Places Installation using Oaxacan woodcarving to discuss cultural displacement. The Puro Chingón Collective has recently released ChingoZine 4, and the Latino designer toy line, ChingoLandia.