By Edgar Garcia
UTRGV’s Creative Writing Department started a podcast to promote the Masters of Fine Arts program and culture around the Valley where Graduate Teaching Assistant Andrés Torres Scott and Graduate Assistant Maribel Sanchez interview local talent in the Valley and beyond in a show called “Write by the Valley”.
The podcast showcases and interviews local authors with connections to the Rio Grande Valley about their work. The guest of the podcast have ranged from students at UTRGV like Graduate Student J Villaneuva to UTRGV Professors like Professor Elvia Ardalani and noted authors such as Leticia Urieta. All of them using the lens of growing up around the valley and a tie to hispanic culture so deeply infused within the culture here.
The podcast started as the brainchild of the UTRGV Writing Department in order to bring attention to the program and truly reach out to the people of the valley as Andres Torres Scott speaks about.
“We thought about it with the head of department, Dr. Emmy Perez. She was thinking about new ways to reach new or prospective writers around the valley and of course around, all across the country, texas and even in Mexico. So one of the ways to do that was to use more thoroughly the social media, and one of those fields we haven’t explored or that the MFA didn’t explore yet was to make a podcast,” Scott said.
“That was the seed of the idea, to promote the mfa and creative writing,” Scott said.
The podcast’s purpose is also to promote the creative writing program within the school which Maribel Sanchez has said is an unknown to the student body.
“Just bringing awareness to the fact that mastering in creative writing is even a possibility. I know that i’ve tabled some events before and people will come up and they’ll be so surprised at the idea of mastering or majoring in creative writing. They had no idea. I didn’t even know,” Sanchez said.
Graduate Assistant at UTRGV J Villanueva was second ever interviewee of the podcast for his poetry in his book “Road Side Fruteria” and is a future host of the podcast. He spoke about how the podcast will serve as a gateway for the audience to see who these writers are.
“It allows people who are listening to kinda get an insight on who these artist are, who these writers are, who they are as people. They get to talk about writing and what they write about. And alot of us have a lot of stories to tell when it comes to living on the border lands, when it comes to being latinx and whatever else they decide to talk about during their episode,” said Villaneuva.
The “Write by the Valley” podcast is available on Spotify and various other platforms such as Amazon Podcast and Anchor.
