Fort Collins Book Fest - Untold Histories: Exploring Marginalized Voices Through Memoir, Poetry, and Essay

Hear how three authors investigate and share the untold stories of marginalized voices through unique forms of storytelling. Through his memoir, Tim Z. Hernandez (They Call You Back) investigates the plane crash that killed 28 Mexicans in Los Gatos Canyon. In an epic poem, Teow Lim Goh (Bitter Creek) explores the buried history of Chinese coal miners during the labor strike. In a series of essays, Brandon Shimoda (The Afterlife is Letting Go) reflects on the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Book sales and signing to follow courtesy of The Crowded Bookshelf. 

Fort Collins Book Fest combines the community’s passion for the literary arts and our unique cultural heritage in a celebration of literature, literacy, and social conversation for all ages. For more Fort Collins Book Fest events, visit focobookfest.org.

About the Panelists

Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His work includes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of the American Book Award, and the International Latino Book Award. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, C-Span, NPR’s All Things Considered, and many others.  He lives in El Paso, Texas with his two children. 

Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently The Afterlife Is Letting Go (City Lights, 2024), which received a Creative Nonfiction grant from the Whiting Foundation; Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023); and The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which received the PEN Open Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Brynn Saito, of The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration, which is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2025. He lives with his family in Colorado Springs, where he teaches creative writing and Japanese American literature at Colorado College.

Teow Lim Goh is the author of three poetry collections, Islanders (2016), Faraway Places (2021), and Bitter Creek (2025). Her essay collection Western Journeys (2022) was a finalist for the 2023 Colorado Book Awards in Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has been featured in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, High Country News, and The New Yorker.