We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephanie Adams-Santos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephanie below.
Stephanie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on is the “Passport of Witness” — an anthology/artist book, a collaboration between me, my dear friend Sun Young Kang, and 25 Palestinian artists and writers. This urgent project is dedicated to the unwavering spirit of Palestine and its people, emphasizing that even in exile and diaspora, the land and its people remain inseparable. Handcrafted with enormous love every step of the way, this book mirrors and subverts the concept of a passport. It serves as a small yet potent portal to the homeland that exists in memory, blood, and dream. “Passport of Witness” was dreamt, curated, edited, and assembled over seven months. Through poetry, testimony, and family history, each page unfolds a narrative of identity and survival. This book is more than just a collection of words; it is a living document—a prayer of hope, a cry for freedom, a song that cannot be stamped out.
As a Guatemalan-American whose own lineage has been impacted by genocide and colonization, this project has profound personal resonance for me. This moment in time ripples back through history and will surely ripple forward into the future we hope to create for ourselves. What we do now as artists, as writers, as human beings will determine our direction. As a poet, screenwriter, and visual artist, I work across many mediums. Over the past devastating months, it has been rewarding to channel my creativity into community efforts and projects that stand against genocide and support the people of Gaza. Aside from “Passport of Witness,” I built an altar for the besieged at a gallery in Portland, OR, where visitors can leave prayers and donations for endangered families in Gaza. I have created artwork and donated books and tarot readings to support Gaza families with fundraising campaigns. I have written countless letters to my representatives and co-led a creative writing workshop for channeling grief into language for those bearing witness. I have let this present moment infuse my writing, my friendships, my collaborations, my teaching, my entire being. The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said that “against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.” May our witness not break our spirits but forge the courage to uphold the dream of freedom for one another.
The spirit of collaboration and community is at the heart of my creative work, and collaborative efforts have been the most meaningful work of my life. I am continually inspired by the artists and communities this year who are channeling their efforts and creativity into projects that stand against fascism and genocide and bolster humanity — in spite of the McCarthyism, censorship, and risk to their careers. Being part of such vital collective efforts reaffirms my belief in the power of art to not only reflect our realities but also to actively shape and challenge them.
Stephanie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a Guatemalan-American artist and writer who grew up traveling between our home in Portland, OR, and Huehuetenango, Guatemala with my family of six. For many years, we made the drive in a VW van, immersing me in two distinct cultures (and the liminal space between, in which I find my belonging). My work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and illustration, among other hybrid forms, and my curiosities are deeply rooted in a fascination with the weird, numinous, and primal forces that shape our inner lives.My work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and illustration, among other ybrid forms, and my curiosities are deeply rooted in a fascination with the weird, numinous, and primal forces that shape our inner lives. Over the years, I have cultivated a diverse body of work that includes several full-length poetry collections and chapbooks. My most recent collection, DREAM OF XIBALBA, was selected by Jericho Brown as the winner of the 2021 Orison Poetry Prize and is a finalist for both the 2024 Oregon Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award. I have several illustrated poems in the recently-released anthology of hybrid works, “A Mouth Holds Many Things,” by Phonograph Books, and work forthcoming in an anthology of Latinx futurisms by Deep Vellum. I served as a Staff Writer and Story Editor on the television anthology horror series TWO SENTENCE HORROR STORIES on Netflix, for which my episode “Elliot” won a 2022 Gold Telly Award in TV Writing. My screenwriting has been supported with fellowships from Sundance, Film Independent, and Tanya Saracho’s Ojalá Ignition Lab. Most recently, I wrote for a Latinx horror anthology radio drama set to premiere on iHeart Radio this fall. I I am also creating an original tarot deck that blends poetry, animism, and ancestral magic.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
One of the deep gifts to my imagination has been Federico García Lorca’s essay “Play and Theory of the Duende,” in which he describes his concept of the duende. He describes duende as a force at once mystical and earthly that embodies the essence of deeply felt and vital works of creation: “The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet. Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive.” It’s a raw, mysterious, inexhaustible energy that cannot be commanded or exploited by the artist. He writes, “Seeking the duende, there is neither map nor discipline. We only know it burns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, rejects all the sweet geometry we understand…” It reminds me that authentic artistic expression often comes from an uncharted, passionate place within where our deepest struggles play out. Reflecting on the duende, former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith says “Any poet who is honest with him or herself recognizes a struggle very near the impetus to write…The duende stirs as a way of saying: you will only stay whole by moving—day after day, note after note, poem after poem—from one world to the next.” Lorca was a queer Spanish poet and playwright who was executed during Franco’s fascist reign in Spain. Despite the tragedy of his death, his work endures with inexhaustible vitality, with duende. He has been a tremendous influence and inspiration in how I approach creativity. It’s not and never will be a “brand” for me, but a vital force that helps me stay rooted in the deepest waters of my own life, and the collective energy that connects us all.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
As a Guatemalan-American raised in the mostly-white community of Portland, OR, and as the daughter of an immigrant, I learned to code-switch from a young age. I figured out how to speak, how to withhold, how to mask myself in order to win the approval of my teachers, my bosses, and the institutions that raised me. I attended Ivy League universities for my BA and MFA, thinking I needed them to legitimize myself. But those are just the structures of capitalism. I am on a journey of unlearning the false power of these institutions. My journey as an artist has meant destroying those ivory towers and reclaiming the wilderness and agency of my own creative path. Through ritual, dreamwork, community work, and deep personal decolonization, I have been working to dismantle the artificial hierarchies I inherited and re-wild my process from the inside out. I once read an article about a woman who gave up her Harvard admission to learn to grow corn. I wish that had been me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.obscurobeach.com
- Instagram: tarot_obscuro
Image Credits
Photo 2 by Sun Young Kang (showing Passport of Witness project), all others by me