José Torres-Tama was born in Ecuador, raised in Jersey City and New York City, and lives in New Orleans since 1984. He is a 2015 MAP Fund award recipient for his ALIENS Taco Truck Theater Project, which will transform a food vehicle into a mobile theater to explore the current anti-immigrant hysteria gripping the USA. Also he has received Regional Artist Project award from the NEA for his multidisciplinary performances, and he is a Louisiana Theater Fellow. He received a National Performance Network Creation Fund award for ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, a sci-fi Latino noir solo chronicling the persecution of immigrants as “aliens” and extraterrestrials. He is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation award for his art book New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy, published by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. In September 2014, Diálogos Books New Orleans published Immigrant Dreams & Alien Nightmares, a debut collection of twenty-five years of poems from 1989 to 2014, and from 2006 to 2011, he contributed commentaries to National Public Radio’s Latino USA, exploring the many challenges of the epic post-Katrina recovery and human rights violations immigrant workers have faced in helping to rebuild New Orleans. His battle cry is NO GUACAMOLE For Immigrant Haters! www.torrestama.com
