Sonia Guiñansaca, Invited Artist Faculty (2013 and 2017)
Sonia Guiñansaca is a Queer Migrant Poet, Cultural Organizer, and Activist from Harlem by way of Ecuador. Guiñansaca a VONA/Voices alumni who has performed at El Museo Del Barrio, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NY Poetry Festival, Galleria de La Raza, and featured on NBC, PBS, Latina Magazine, Pen American, and the Poetry Foundation to name a few. She has been named as 1 of 10 Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know by Remezcla and recently announced as the 2017’s Artist in Residency at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. She has emerged as a national leader in the undocumented/migrant artistic and political communities. In 2007, Guiñansaca came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant. Currently, she is working on her full-length poetry manuscript on migration, queerness, and her change in immigration status from undocumented to documented. She was the Managing Director, and coordinator of the UndocuWriting project at CultureStrike.