Bonnie Ilza Cisneros is a fourth-generation educator in a line of Tejana school teachers.
Bonnie holds an MFA from Texas State University, is a member of Macondo Writers Workshop, and was awarded a NALAC artist grant in 2018. She received an 2023 Individual Artist Grant from the City of San Antonio to archive, exhibit, and celebrate Siempre Verde: Música for Feeling & Healing, an interdisciplinary pandemic project at Evergreen Garden.
Bonnie is published in El Retorno, Chicana/Latina Studies, River Teeth, El Placazo, Porter House Journal, La Voz de Esperanza, Contemporary Creative Nonfiction and has a seven-tiered matrilineal essay in a forthcoming anthology entitled Somos Tejanas (UT Press).
Moonlighting as DJ Despeinada, she spins all-vinyl soundscapes of the borderlands. Bonnie curates cultural events, teaches workshops, presents lectures, records radio shows, publishes zines, crafts rasquache style, builds altares, and raises two m’ijas with her musician/carpenter husband in San Antonio, Texas.
Her digital archive is www.bonniecisneros.com.
This interview originally aired on November 20, 2022.