Brother Brontë Book Reading by Fernando A. Flores & Pretty Vacant Film Screening by Jim Mendiola

As part of its continuing programming supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place Grant, the River Pierce Foundation will host a special day of film and literature on Saturday, February 28th, celebrating the paperback release of Brother Brontë, the latest novel by acclaimed author Fernando A. Flores.

The event will take place at the Treviño–Uribe Fort in San Ygnacio and will feature a book reading by Flores alongside a screening of Pretty Vacant, the SXSW award-winning film by filmmaker Jim Mendiola, who will also be present for the event.

Fernando A. Flores is a Mexican-American author born in Reynosa, Mexico and raised in South Texas. He is the author of Tears of the Trufflepig, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Valleyesque, and is widely recognized for his surreal, border-inflected fiction rooted in the cultural, political, and ecological realities of the Rio Grande Valley. Brother Brontë, his second novel and third book to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, continues Flores’s exploration of speculative futures, borderland identity, and the uneasy intersections of technology, power, and place. Flores will read selections from his writings and participate in a panel discussion and Q&A with attendees.

The event will also include a screening of Pretty Vacant (1996), winner of the award for Best Narrative Short at the SXSW Film Festival. Directed by San Antonio-based filmmaker Jim Mendiola, the film blends documentary and narrative forms to examine Chicano culture, regional history, and popular mythology. A 1997 Rockefeller Intercultural Media Fellow, Mendiola's work has screened internationally at film festivals and museums including the Havana International Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mendiola will introduce the film and participate in a post-screening discussion.

The event is free and open to the public and continues the River Pierce Foundation’s commitment to interdisciplinary humanities programming that foregrounds borderland voices, regional histories, and creative practices rooted in place.

Schedule

2:00pm-2:00pm: Lunch & viewing of “Split Sketches” installation by artist Tim Gonchoroff

2:00pm-3:00pm: Brother Brontë Book Reading by author Fernando A. Flores

3:00pm-3:30pm: Pretty Vacant Film Screening by filmmaker Jim Mendiola

3:30pm-4:30pm: Panel Discussion and Q&A with Fernando A. Flores and Jim Mendiola