Date: August 8,2026
In July, 2026, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alan Chazaro about his latest poetry collection, These Spaceships Weren’t Built for Us. Our conversation took us from the lasting influence of Bay Area hip hop and car culture, the importance of multidimensional Latino representation, the relationship between place and identity, to the intuitive process behind shaping poems. Throughout our discussion, Chazaro reflected on poetry as a space for reclaiming historically overlooked stories, honoring cultural inheritance, and imagining expansive futures where marginalized communities can exist on their own terms.