Border Regional Library Association (BRLA). Archives

El Paso Community College’s Kristin Sanchez Honored with Librarian of the Year

Staff Report March 7, 2019 News Comments Off on El Paso Community College’s Kristin Sanchez Honored with Librarian of the Year

On Thursday, the Border Regional Library Association (BRLA) named Kristin Sanchez its Librarian of the Year for 2019.

“I am very honored to receive the BRLA Librarian of the Year award.” Kristin Sanchez said. “The students inspire me to continue to learn and grow as a librarian so that I can help them on their path to success.”

Sanchez is an El Paso Community College (EPCC) Professor/District-wide Library Coordinator and Rio Grande Campus Head Librarian.

“Kristin is generous with her time, her talents and her willingness to help and do for others.” Paula Mitchell, Interim AVP Instruction and Student Success said.

“She is most definitely service oriented and makes me and other librarians feel good and proud to be part of a profession that helps so many who present diverse and unique informational needs.”

The Border Regional Library Association (BRLA) is an organization founded in 1966 for the promotion of library service and librarianship in the El Paso/Las Cruces/Juárez metroplex.

Current membership includes over 100 librarians, paraprofessionals, media specialists and library friends and trustees from all types of libraries in the tri-state area of Trans-Pecos Texas, Southern New Mexico and Northern Chihuahua.

Sandoval’s South Sun Rises wins Southwest Book Award

Staff Report January 26, 2016 Borderland's Best, News Comments Off on Sandoval’s South Sun Rises wins Southwest Book Award

Valentin Sandoval‘s recent labor of love, South Sun Rises is a recipient of this year’s Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association (BRLA).

His bi-lingual poetic narrative was bred and conceptualized in the Chihuahua desert of the El Paso/Juarez border and finalized in one of the true breeding grounds of American experience, New York City, specifically, the Lower East Side, 2nd st. and Ave. B.

Valentin reminisces, “I wrote it spending time at the NuYorican Poets Cafe with the owner Miguel Algarin, the first Puerto Rican PhD to teach at Rutgers, and also support from Tony Spiller. They really liked the idea of me writing about my family first in context of some material we looked at.”

Algarin and Spiller are both American Book Award Winners. South Sun Rises speaks to to the melting pot of the 21st century and invites others into an intrapersonal dialogue. The poetic narrative is not just mere pulp and harshness to be exploited and make genre specific due to its cultural backdrop but an American immigrant story like the myriad that have founded and built America to seamlessly become Americana.

“It’s a hero story set in El Paso / Juarez like a modern Ellis Island,” Sandoval adds. Valentin’s muse and own personal heart of darkness to pen the visual anchor points of his novel was an ongoing inward meditation of love in search of his father who he never met and the respect and growth of his single mother.

The story of an absent father and single mother could play out in many scenarios across America and the world but delivered here in a way that strikes at the empathy of a first generation hyper connected planet becoming increasingly stirred in terms of ethnic identity.