WORDS ON A WIRE: Alex Espinoza

Daniel & Ben talk with Alex Espinoza, author of "The Five Acts of Diego Leon," a novel which follows a Mexican-born actor who breaks into Hollywood at the dawn of the era of the "talkies" in the 1920s & `30s.  Espinoza explains how the story grew out of an interview he read about actor Ricardo Montalban and the struggles he faced in being typecast in TV and film.  Espinoza also talks about the extensive research he did for the novel, and how a Mexican mask maker inspired him to draw a parallel between acting and the wearing of masks to reveal or conceal who we really are. www.alexespinoza.com

For this week's Poem of the Week, Ben reads e.e. cummings' "somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond."

On this week's Poetic License, Lauren Espinoza talks about Latino identity in poetry.  Espinoza is currently a graduate student in the M.F.A. Program in Poetry at Arizona State University where she is the Teaching Artist for the Young Writers Program.  She is a CantoMundo intern, and an inaugural member of the Letras Latinas Young Poets Initiative (where the text for this Poetic License comes from).  http://www.enthuse.me/lauren_espinoza

Aired May 12, 2013.