Our CMAS/Voces Collaborative Fellowship was won by four individuals: Maria-Luisa Ornelas-June, Norma Elia Cantú (Trinity University in San Antonio), Olivia Mena (The University of Texas at Austin), and Miguel Angel Ramirez, (Gallaudet University, Washington, DC). We interviewed 16 people about the Macondo Writers Workshop, which was founded 30 years ago in San Antonio by noted writer Sandra Cisneros.

Thirty-two professors and graduate students spent the first week of June with us in Austin, learning about the basics and more advanced interviewing techniques of oral history.

Interns worked from January to August, producing 25 short narrated stories and four long stories, which ran on NPR stations across the state.

We featured Florentino Cantú Jr., a Vietnam War hero of Laredo who was killed in action in 1968, and Frank Maldonado, a Vietnam War helicopter pilot who later furthered his impact by helping undocumented and low-wage workers navigate the legal system

Through a generous grant from the Summerlee Foundation, students in Oral History as Journalism interviewed five Vietnam veterans. Those interviews will continue.

The Oral History as Journalism class also interviewed local Austin leaders in fields like social justice, environmental activism and more.

We published our ninth issue, featuring articles from our first two Collaborative Fellowships by Vanessa Fonseca- Chávez of Arizona State University and Philis Barragán Goetz of Texas A&M University-San Antonio.

Our wonderful assistant director Kristine Navarro McElhaney retired at the end of August but will still help out on occasion.
 

We hired a new associate director, Gustavo Aguilar, who has more than 20 years of experience in videography.