How do we give voice to the forgotten? What does it mean to turn research into remembrance, and remembrance into literature?
Writer and poet Tim Z. Hernández has dedicated his career to recovering stories lost to silence —whether tracing the unidentified victims of the 1948 Los Gatos plane crash in All They Will Call You, or reflecting on personal and collective survival in his most recent memoir They Call You Back. Blending lyrical precision with investigative urgency, Hernández’s work lives at the intersection of art and archive, illuminating the lives of migrants, workers, and everyday people whose histories too often go unrecorded.
Across genres —poetry, fiction, memoir— he writes with an unwavering commitment to truth and memory, transforming grief into testimony and the personal into something resonant and shared.
This conversation will be moderated by Claudia Vega, founder of Whose Books in Dallas.
