Join us on Wednesday, July 29 as we welcome William Archila back to the shop for the release of Canícula / Dog Days. He will be joined by fellow writers Lory Bedikian, Leticia Hernandez, and Eduardo Martinez. Save the date! RSVP is not required, but appreciated. Seats are limited and can be guaranteed with the purchase of a book or a $3 sliding scale donation to our program.

About the book

“In this brilliant bilingual anthology, William Archila creates a powerful and fiery poetics of exile, war, and, ultimately and brilliantly, survival.”—Daniel Borzutzky, National Book Award winner

From war-torn El Salvador to the streets of LA, Canícula / Dog Days is a bold, bilingual collection chronicling exile, memory, and resilience across borders.

William Archila’s Canícula / Dog Days is a bilingual selection of his first two books of poetry, The Art of Exile and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, two collections that chart the emergence of a newcomer in the chorus of Latin Poetry. Canícula, which means “dog days” in English, takes the reader on a poignant journey from the unrest in El Salvador in the 1980s to the urban landscape of the US immigrant, revealing the turmoil and memory of the disempowered, the impoverished, and the displaced who struggle back home in Central America. In lyrical and often harrowing language, Archila unearths the vestiges of war and the exile’s return in an elegy, the fragments of a myth, or a jazz riff. They come together like the bilateral symmetry of a volcano, and the result is the introduction to Archila’s poetry for the Spanish reader.

“En esta brillante antología bilingüe, William Archila crea una poética poderosa y apasionada del exilio, la guerra y, en última instancia y con maestría, la supervivencia.”—Daniel Borzutzky, ganador del National Book Award

Desde un El Salvador devastado por la guerra hasta las calles de Los Ángeles, Canícula / Dog Days es una antología bilingüe audaz, que narra el exilio, la memoria y la resiliencia a través de las fronteras.

Canícula / Dog Days de William Archila es una selección bilingüe de sus dos primeros libros de poesía, El arte del exilio y La arqueología del sepulturero, dos poemarios que marcan el surgimiento de un nuevo referente en la poesía latina. Dog Days, que significa “canícula”, lleva al lector a través de un viaje conmovedor desde la agitación en El Salvador en la década de 1980 hasta el paisaje urbano del inmigrante en los Estados Unidos, revelando la angustia y la memoria de los marginados, los empobrecidos y los desplazados, que luchan por volver a su hogar en Centroamérica. Con un lenguaje lírico y a menudo desgarrador, Archila desentierra los vestigios de la guerra y el regreso del exiliado en una elegía, en los fragmentos de un mito o en un riff de jazz. Estos se conjugan como la simetría de un volcán, y el resultado es la presentación de la poesía de Archila al lector en español.

About the author

William Archila, born in El Salvador, is the author of the most recent publications Canícula/Dog Days: Selected Poems 2009-2013 and S is For, winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is also the author of The Art of Exile and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology. He was awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship. He has been published in Poetry magazine, The American Poetry Review, AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, TriQuarterly, and the anthology Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. He is an associate editor at Tía Chucha Press. Born in El Salvador, he now lives in Los Angeles, on Tongva land.

Lory Bedikian’s second book Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body won the 2023 Prairie Schooner/Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Poetry, published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her first collection The Book of Lamenting won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Her work received the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and is included in the anthology Border Lines: Poems of Migration, KNOPF, 2020. Bedikian has received grants from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and was chosen to be part of the 2024 Poets & Writers Poetry publicity cohort. She recently received the 2024 Anahid Literary Award from the Columbia University Armenian Center. Bedikian teaches poetry workshops in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Leticia Hernández-Linares is an award-winning bilingual, interdisciplinary writer, artist, and racial justice educator. She is the author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl, Alejandria Fights Back! ¡La lucha de Alejandria! and co-editor of The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. Widely published, her work appears in anthologies such as Maestrapeace, San Francisco’s Monumental Feminist Mural and Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology.  A six-time San Francisco Arts Commission grantee, she received the Community Appreciation Award from the SF Flor y Canto Festival in 2023. She has lived, created, taught, & protested in the Mission (unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land) for thirty years and teaches in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at SFSU.

Eduardo Martínez-Leyva was born in El Paso, TX, to Mexican immigrants. He is the author of Cowboy Park, which was published by the University of Wisconsin Press and was the winner of the 2024 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, an award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters, a Lambda Literary Award, and the 2026 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work appears in Narrative Magazine, The Slowdown, Best New Poets, Poetry Magazine, the Boston Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from CantoMundo, The Frost Place, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Lambda Literary, and received a Teaching Fellowship at Columbia University, where he earned his MFA. He teaches and resides in Los Angeles, California.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Check-in for the event will begin at 6:45pm.
• Priced ticket holders (Book+seat, Pay it Forward!+seat) will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.
• General admission ticket holders will be offered seats at check-in on a first-come, first-served basis. May be standing room.
• Space at the door on the day of the event is usually available, but not guaranteed.
• Books will be for sale on the night of the event.
• ADA accessible. Bathrooms on site during event hours.
• Events typically end between 8:30 and 9pm.
• Questions? tickets@booksmith.com