(This highly praised collection explores the disparity bet...)
This highly praised collection explores the disparity between promises and reality, especially as seen from the vantage point of the Hispanic Americans from the time of Columbus to the present. Promesas: Geography of the Impossible is Gloria Vando’s long-awaited first book of poems, a reunion of some of the complex and fully realized works that have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.
(The poems in Gloria Vando's second collection craft a wor...)
The poems in Gloria Vando's second collection craft a world of shadows: the remnants of Europe in the wake of World War II, the Vietnam soldier haunted by the photograph of a child, and the blood tax exacted from Puerto Rican Americans during the Vietnam War. And through it all, the shadows are enhanced by the supposes: her daughter's encounter with death at the Museum of Natural History, the "untrodden route beckoning to us from the side of logic," and Vando's own musings on life and death.
Gloria Vando Hickok is an American editor, publisher, and poet. She is a founder of Helicon Nine Editions and a co-founder of The Writers Place.
Background
Gloria Vando Hickok was born on May 21, 1936, in New York, United States. She is a daughter of Erasmo Vando, a poet, and Anita Velez-Mitchell, a director, journalist, writer, and poet. Gloria Vando grew up in a family that revered literature: every aunt, uncle, cousin could recite major poems by heart. Her grandmother, with whom she lived as a child, regaled her with poems and stories. She was an avid reader and storyteller. As a child, Gloria Vando attended many Sunday afternoon recitals that featured Latino entertainers in a variety of art forms that included dance, operatic arias, string quartets, classical guitarists, and declamadores, who recited poetry and got standing ovations.
Education
In 1951-1956, Gloria Vando Hickok attended New York University, in 1953-1954 - the University of Amsterdam. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M University) in 1975. She had a postgraduate study at Long Island University in 1982-1983.
In 1969-1970, Gloria Vando Hickok worked as an educational ombudsman at Mayor's Special School Task Force, New York. In 1977-1979, she was an educational consultant at the Youth Diversion project, Mayor's Office, Kansas City, Missouri. In 1977, Vando Hickok became a publisher and editor at Helicon Nine Editions, a non-profit literary press in Kansas City, Missouri which she founded. For ten years, Helicon Nine Editions published a national literary magazine Helicon Nine: The Journal of Women's Arts & Letters. Helicon Nine Editions also sponsored the Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the Willa Cather Fiction Prize for fifteen years. In 1996, she became a contributing editor at North American Review, Cedar Falls, Iowa. In 1992, she and her husband, William Hickok, co-founded The Writers Place, a literary community center in Kansas City, Missouri.
Gloria Vando Hickok has served on literature panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous state arts councils, and as a judge for the National Book Series Awards, held residencies in schools through Young Audiences and Arts Partners. She is on the advisory boards of BkMk Press (University of Missouri-Kansas City) and The Writers Place and has served as Arts Committee Chair for the Clearinghouse for Midcontinent Foundations, on the Board of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), and on the Kansas Governor's Council on the Arts. She is a contributing editor of The North American Review.
Gloria Vando Hickok writes in Spanish and English. She published her first poetry collection. Promesas: Geography of the Impossible, in 1993. Through childhood memories of her Puerto Rican family, explorations of historical events, and discussions of contemporary topics, Vando claims her joint legacy, both American and Puerto Rican. Her next book, Spud Songs: An Anthology of Potato Poems - To Benefit Hunger Relief, may seem somewhat lighter in tone, but there is a seriousness of purpose. With her co-editor Robert Stewart, she collected various poets' odes to the humble potato, a food that has actually staved off starvation in two world wars and other times of stress among European populations. A wide-ranging series of poems, topics include impressions of different cities, poetic odes to various artists and writers, and small dramas, such as a boy lost in the Museum of Natural History or a Black-shirt trying to seduce a blonde Jewish.
Community of Literary Magazines and Presses
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United States
Missouri Citizens for the Arts
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United States
PEN International
Interests
photography, painting
Writers
T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare
Connections
Gloria Vando married Maurice Peress on July 2, 1955. They divorced in September 1980. She married William H. Hickok on October 4, 1980. Gloria Vando has three children: Lorca, Paul, and Anika.