New UTPA lecture series focuses on prolific authors

Anyone can become a writer. It just takes discipline to write everyday and consistently, said award-winning author and journalist Elena Poniatowska.

“I think literature is at the top of our fingers,” Poniatowska said in a telephone interview from Mexico City.

On the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 10, she will be the first of the University of Texas-Pan American Library’s new Innovative Speaker Series.

Poniatowska was born in Paris and raised in Mexico. She said she began writing as a way to express herself.

“I wanted to sing in a cabaret, but my parents said it wasn’t proper,” she said. “So I became a journalist.”

Poniatowska began her writing career in the 1950s freelancing for the Mexican publication Excelsior, as well as writing books and other literature. She went on to write for other publications, as well as have more works published.

Throughout her career, Poniatowska wrote about a wide variety of issues from human rights to the arts. Among her works is La Noche de Tlateloco, about the 1968 Tlateloco Massacre, when army troops shot down more than 200 college students and others protesting just days before Mexico City was to host the Olympics, as well as Las Soldaderas: Women of the Mexican Revolution, where she focused on the often marginalized women involved in the Mexican Revolution in 1910, according to the university.

Poniatowska has traveled all over the world, interviewing everyone from common folk to world leaders for journalism projects.

“I think it is very important to see others, to be able to compare (where you’re from to other places),” she said. “I think it is very important to go out of yourself … Seeing others teaches you a lot about yourself.”

But her true love is writing novels, poetry and other literature, she said.

“Because you can write what you feel like. You don’t have to be as factual. You can invent what you want, you can put feeling into (what you write),” Poniatowska said.

The author said she enjoys speaking to university students and is looking forward to coming to UTPA.

“I enjoy their intelligence, youth, curiosity,” she said.

The new series was something UTPA web and marketing librarian Virginia Haynie Gause had wanted to do for years, and recent additional funding from the university allowed her to start the endeavor.

Gause said she wanted to bring Poniatowska to the campus earlier, but was unable to schedule her until now because of the author’s other commitments.

Gause said she was impressed by how Poniatowska has written about everything from human rights, especially women’s rights issues, to art and how she has been able to shape history through her works.

“She started in a man’s world in 1953,” Gause said about Poniatowska’s work at Excelsior. She added that Poniatowska declined an offer to become a full-time writer for the paper, and wanted to remain a freelancer.

“She wanted to be free to report life as she sees it,” Gause said.

Poniatowska will speak from 7-9 p.m. at the Engineering Building’s auditorium room 1.300. The event is free and is open to the public, but seating will be based on a first-come, first serve basis since the auditorium only seats 256 people.

Jennifer L. Berghom covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.