Today we’d like to introduce you to Brenda Vaca.
Hi Brenda, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I always wanted to be a writer. I always had a love for language and stories – and not just my own. Over the years, I have enjoyed being a witness and holding space for other people’s stories. It has truly enriched my life.
My parents are both outstanding oral storytellers. When I was a child growing up in the 1980s in this fairly non-traditional Mexican family, I loved to hear them share stories from their childhood. They also loved to share their parents’ stories – they are both definitely the story bearers of their families. Because of this influence, I would write little stories as soon as I could string words together. Even when I was probably misspelling words in kindergarten, I imagined I was accurately writing little stories.
Like many other writers, my love for stories was fueled at the free public library. I was the youngest of four and some of my favorite memories are hanging out at the children’s section of the Whittier Public Library. But I also remember being old enough to reach the file cabinets that housed the index cards that identified the locations of a multitude of books organized according to the Dewey Decimal System. I remember the joy I felt when I figured out how to decode this seemingly mysterious system.
My oldest brother also has a great love for stories and we are proud that he’s been teaching English literature to high school students for almost 30 years. He was definitely among my first teachers and would often give me reading assignments based on the classes he was taking. This was definitely a challenge since he is four years older than me. I was often challenged to read books with a dictionary in hand. That only expanded my love for language.
In my undergraduate years, I moved from South Whittier, CA (the place of my upbringing) to Berkeley, CA. While at U.C. Berkeley, I was an English major with a minor in Creative writing. This is where I really starting to explore my voice as a poet. Although I applied to MFA programs, I was not granted access so that seemed for a while to be a road that was closed to me. Somehow I ended up in Seminary (long story!) at the Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union, where I earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Biblical Languages. Once again, this deepened my love for stories and opened the doors to public speaking and community organizing. This landed me in a pulpit in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Jose, where over the next ten years, I would be called Pastor Brenda or Pastor B or even Reverenda Brenda. To make a long story very short (you’ll just have to read the memoir later), I left the ministry in 2015 and have been working on my personal writing ever since.
In December 2021, I set up a micro independent publishing house called Riot of Roses Publishing House and published my own book, my first collection of poetry also called Riot of Roses. Yes, it took a global pandemic to put a fire under my tail to live out my lifelong dream of being a published writer.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Being a writer and, now being a publisher has not been an easy road. To be honest, it’s life as a writer that was been the most challenging. In my early 20s, I suffered what I often refer to as a writing trauma. In college, I put myself on a particular trajectory to finish my Bachelor’s degree and move forward into a Master of Fine Arts program. Because other doors had opened up to me, I assumed that the doors to the kingdom of a master’s in Creative Writing awaited me. That was not to be the case. One after one I received envelopes with regrets and rejections. One such envelope even included a sticky note with the reader’s comments about my manuscript. It was a dagger to my poor poetic heart.
At this point, my poetic voice went silent. I kept writing: poetry, essays, short stories, journal entries. Most of what would never see the light of day. I came to believe that my voice was not good enough. But I couldn’t stop writing and I rarely threw any of it away. The dream lingered in silence in notebooks, on napkins, on cassettes, and eventually in audio memos. I preached almost every Sunday for a decade. My public voice was filtered. My poetic voice was my real voice and she was aching to be set free. She had been suffocating for so long. So while much of the world withdrew and drew in during that first year of the pandemic, I joined the multitude of poets coming out of the woodwork on Zooms and Instagram lives.
You can say my biggest challenge has been believing in my own voice. Well, once I remembered who am and who I come from, my throat chakra shivered and shook and then shouted and then shushed all the voices that said I couldn’t or shouldn’t. And I committed myself and my micro house – ROR – to pass the mic and the printing press to historically silenced voices. All of us have stories – sacred and beautiful – and just as stories have helped to heal my heart and set me free and sometimes even save me – I trust that the stories that will be published in the years to come by other writers will heal, liberate, and save others as well.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a writer, public speaker, and independent publisher of Riot of Roses Publishing House, which was established in late 2021. One thing that I am known for is that I launched a Kickstarter Campaign in the Fall of 2021 to set up the business structure of the publishing house as well as gather enough funding to publish my first collection of poetry, Riot of Roses. I set a modest goal and I had 30 days to reach it. I jumped on social media, in my emails, slid into peoples’ DMs, and sent text messages to make it happen. And I did it. I hit the goal just a couple of days shy of the deadline. If you know anything about Kickstarter, it’s an all or nothing platform. If you don’t hit your goal, you don’t receive any of the funds. I truly had to believe in my vision and my book to pull it off. As it turns out, this inspired people and it’s wonderful to see others stepping out to live out their vision for their lives.
I’m also the host of the weekly Instagram Live Series called Friday Fire, which has live streamed almost every Friday since February 2022. I have had the great opportunity to interview poets and storytellers from a variety of backgrounds. This led to an in-person residency at Uptown Plants Casa Verde LA in Uptown Whittier, where I co-host The Post Up every third Friday along with Ruben and Lindsay Cardenas Sezati. We will be celebrating our 1st anniversary in August 2023.
As a Xicana, I’m very proud of the work and energy I put into my creative work, which includes writing, publishing, performing, and creating safe spaces for other storytellers to share their gifts. I might be a late bloomer, but I feel so blessed to be sharing the mic and this time during this poetic and storytelling renaissance. So many of our stories were not documented for generations. Now is the time. Here is the place. In xochitl, in cuicatl.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Your voice and your stories are valuable. No one has your flavor. Don’t let anyone silence you. You are here for a reason. Keep writing and believe in yourself. Align your daily practices with your vision for your life. Doors will open or you can knock them down. Or better yet, build your own house and choose the doors to keep your vision safe.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/brendavaca
- Instagram: @iambrendavaca @ohmygatosbooks @riotofrosespublishing
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/riotofroses/
Image Credits
The first 3 photos – as well as the Personal Photo – were taken by Jorge Piñeda – IG @ocphoto1 The 5th photo was taken by Lanisha Cole – IG @misslanishacole @lanisha.jpg The last photo was taken at Casa Verde LA, Whittier CA – IG @casaverdela
