I’ve chosen public transportation and my own two feet as my preferred means of navigating the city. Every day I make it a point to venture out with my camera and a small notebook and just take in this landscape that is Los Angeles. It can be a short tour around the neighborhood, a visit to the Shoe Repair man or a six mile walk. I take a personal object along with me to leave at a bus bench or atop a newspaper vending machine and try and imagine who may have come across it; might this be something they were looking for or had lost? Will they carry it home? Will it remain there for me to find again? Questions posed, and there begins the writing. I have received many, many beautiful gifts on the sidewalks of the city; this is my thank you.
Biography of Marisela Norte: Considered one of the most important literary voices to come out of East Los Angeles, Marisela Norte has performed her work throughout California, the US and the UK. Her words can also be found in the anthologies Microphone Fiends, Bordered Sexualities: Bodies on the Verge of a Nation, The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place, Bear Flag Republic, American Studies in a Moment of Danger, American Quarterly and Rolling Stone’s Women of Rock. In 2008 she received the Ben Reitman award for Peeping Tom Tom Girl , her first collection of prose. Norte is currently working on Sociedad Anonima a collection of photographs and short fiction.
Writers At Work 
Marisela,
Thank you for doing such a tremendous job of representing East Los Angeles.
Jesse Torres
President and CEO
Pan American Bank
East Los Angeles, CA
Dear Jesse:
Thank you so much for your good words! I appreciate them, as you can well imagine sometimes it’s just me and the pen trying to get the stories down…
I’m now adding visuals and hope to publish a book of photos and short fiction. The work continues.
Are you a Facebuquero? I’ve gravitated to Facebook in hopes of reaching a bigger audience for the work.
Hope all is well in your corner of the city.
best,
Marisela Norte
You are in inspiration, homegirl! Keep documenting our village L.A.
Ah sweet Pam! Thank you for the good words girl. We keep doing what we do!
Be well, Marisela
Eres como un buen
Dearest Marisela,
I just told my husband, C.C. Carter, about you today. I said, while I am not a big poetry fan, I do love your works, and have two of your casettes from long ago. I told him I’d even written a fan letter to you, and you wrote back, and that you have lovely, artistic penmanship! He has just published a book of poems also (“After the Rain, the Sun”), and took a lovely picture for the cover of it, and today he may record it, which is what reminded me of you. And now I am trying to track down your poetry on CD, since alas, my casette player has broken. All the best to you!
Lynn Sheppard-Carter