Cathy Arellano
Just another writer from The Mission, CATHY ARELLANO worked as a community poet with Loco Bloco and Mission Girls; and at the Mission Cultural Center, Everett Middle, and Mission High Schools through the San Francisco Arts Commission’s WritersCorps program; Horace Mann Middle School with the Mexican Museum’s community arts workshop; and elementary schools in the Richmond District with the California Poets in the Schools literary series. Later, she became a faculty member in the English Departments at John O’Connell and Leadership High Schools.
Arellano’s work is published in print and online, including La Bloga, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, Cipactli, Curve Magazine, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds, Duke City Fix, El Tecolote, Feminist Formations, Fourteen Hills, Huizache, Label Me Latino, The Malpaís Review, The Más Tequila Review, Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Arts Journal, Tongues Magazine, La Voz, and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, which responds to Arizona’s SB 1070 law that legalized racial profiling and allowed police to stop people suspected of being in the U.S. without papers.
She has won awards from the San Francisco Art Commission, the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference, and Serpent Source Foundation for Women Artists.
Arellano left the Mission and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico on the Three to Five Year Plan that turned into seven. She found a vibrant and supportive group of folks that helped resurrect her writing life. Arellano believes deeply in the power of art and community and is grateful to the artists and activists she has created and marched with and been inspired by in the Mission, the Bay, Búrque, and beyond.
Photo Credit: Rebeka Rodriguez