Notes for Writers

The National Writers Union will be hosting a reading and open mic on Monday, May 18, starting at 6:00 p.m. at 2955 E. Broadway in Tucson.

This month our featured reader will be the poet Chelsea Guevara. Chelsea is a fruit metaphor obsessed U.S.-Salvadoran poet and performer from Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2024, she won the Womxn of the World International Poetry Slam, becoming the first Salvadoran and Utahn to win a national individual slam title. Her first full-length poetry collection Cipota, debuted with Button Poetry in September 2025, explores the depths and limits of memory, storytelling as a mode of generational reclamation, and interpreting the self through periods of transformation. In 2023, Chelsea’s micro-chapbook Somewhere Over the Border was a finalist for the Gunpowder Press Alta California Chapbook Prize, and most recently in March 2026, Chelsea represented the U.S. diaspora in the Latin American regional Slam Abya Yala. As a graduate from the University of Arizona’s Latin American Studies program, Chelsea utilizes her academic research to inform her creative work centering transnational culture, family history, and identity rooted in the Salvadoran diaspora.

The open mic is for spoken word only, but is open to all forms of spoken word (fiction, essays, poetry, articles, polemics, etc.). So bring something to read!

The event will be held at the UFCW Union Hall at 2955 E. Broadway. This is on the north side of Broadway, immediately west of the large and fancy Chase Bank, which is on the northwest corner of Broadway and Country Club Road. Parking and entry are from the rear.

There will not, unfortunately, be a Zoom option this month.Hope to see you there!