Yago Cura founded HINCHAS Press in Los Angeles in 2016. The press comes out of Cura’s Hinchas de Poesia Literary Journal (founded in 2009), a journal Cura began with financial support from one James Foley. Foley, a war journalist, died in 2014 after being detained by ISIS for two years. To memorialize Foley’s support and “honor Jim’s spirit,” Cura collaborated with several writers who also knew Foley to write the anthology Ghazals for Foley (HINCHAS Press, 2016) – the first of HINCHAS press’ books.
From its start as a literary journal, HINCHAS Press has focused on poetry, library science (Cura is themself a public librarian), and zines. The Press is a “bilingual literacy laboratory,” publishing works in English, Spanish, in translation, and/or Spanglish. Honoring its founding, topics continue to focus on social justice and advocacy with recent volumes focused on stories from “Black and Brown writers from around the globe” (e.g., Amorphaville: Stories Outside Time) as well as LA specific authors (e.g., X LA Poets). The Press aims to produce four volumes a year.
Readers can find more about the press on their website or on their Instagram page.
Books in the UC System
UC Berkeley also recently put in an order for several of their additional texts. We also plan on going on a bit of a hunt in the Fall for some of their out of print titles.
This year’s short list for the Caine Prize for African Writing is rather phenomenal. Here’s the list with access to most of the stories full text: