SOMOS 2025

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About Our Presenters

Marina Carreira (she/they) is a queer Luso-American poet and artist from Newark, NJ. A Pushcart Prize nominee and 2024 Luso-American fellow in the DISQUIET Literary Program, Carreira is the author of Dead Things and Where to Put Them (Cavankerry, forthcoming 2025) Desgracada (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Tanto Tanto (Cavankerry Press, 2022), Save the Bathwater (Get Fresh Books, 2018), and I Sing To That Bird Knowing It Won’t Sing Back (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She has exhibited her art at the Newark Museum, Morris Museum, ArtFront Galleries, Monmouth University Center for the Arts, among others. Carreira works in higher education and teaches Women and Gender Studies at Kean University. Find her on Instagram at @savethebathewater.

Isadora Grevan is an Associate Professor of Brazilian and Portuguese studies in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies department at Rutgers University–Newark. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master’s and Ph.D. in Brazilian and Portuguese Studies from Brown University. Her book Fetishism as Structure, Image and Performance in the Theater of Nelson Rodrigues was released in 2021 by Ed.UERJ. Besides her academic work, Isadora has had a background in theater, dance and writing poetry. Her poetry has recently been published in the anthology Daydreams & Lost Wishes: A Poetic Reveries Anthology (2023), in Marxe from editora Urutau (2021), and in literary journals such as “The African Sun” (Brown U) and “Vagabond Multilingual Literary Journal” (UC Berkeley). She is currently preparing a manuscript of poems inspired by the Greek myth of Kore/Persephone.

Andrés Cerpa is the author of three books of poetry, Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy (2019), The Vault (2021), which was celebrated as one of the best poetry books of 2021 by The New York Times, and The Palace (2026) which is forthcoming from Alice James Books. A recipient of a McDowell fellowship, his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, The Nation + elsewhere. Andrés holds degrees from the University of Delaware and Rutgers University–Newark. He is an educator and faculty member of the Randolph MFA Program.

Sheila Maldonado is the author of the poetry collections that’s what you get (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2021) and one-bedroom solo (Fly by Night Press / A Gathering of the Tribes, 2011). She is a CantoMundo fellow and a Creative Capital awardee as part of desveladas, a visual writing collective. She teaches English for the City University of New York. She was born in Brooklyn, raised in Coney Island, the daughter of Armando and Vilma of El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras. She lives in El Alto Manhattan.

Ashley Lana has always been connected to the arts. At just 2 years old, she began taking classical ballet lessons, and by the age of 7, she was participating in fashion shows and advertisements. It was during this successful journey that the artist discovered her love for music. At 9, she started taking singing lessons and soon began performing with renowned local bands. In 2022, she participated in the Brazilian talent TV show “Canta Comigo Teen 3” on the channel Record TV, and in her first performance, she earned 99 out of 100 jury votes. In 2023, a new chapter began as Ashley recorded her DVD “Rolê da Gringa” in Goiânia-Brazil, featuring six unique tracks. Her album includes songs with more than a million views and listeners per month. Ashley Lana also released some past hits of the Brazilian culture, the project calls “Rolê Da Gringa Só Moda Bruta” bringing her original stile into the “Modão” a Brazilian music style.

The Young Picassos Steel band originated in New Brunswick, New Jersey back in 2016 and had their Debut performance at Rutgers University. They have performed at various universities, restaurants, weddings and festivals etc. across the United States. The band is a live musical trio comprised of keys, drums, and the steel pan as the focal basis of Caribbean influence. The experience of our music is a seamless flow over a mix of genres such as Soca, R&B, Hip-Hop and Neo-Soul. “You’ve never heard music like this before…”