BIO
David Acosta, Artistic Director.
David Acosta is a poet, writer, curator and cultural organizer. Before co-founding Casa de Duende with his life partner Gerald Macdonald where he is currently its Artistic Director, he worked in public health focusing his work on HIV education and prevention. A long time LGBT health care and civil rights advocate, he was involved with many groups fighting for health care and civil-rights during the 80s and 90s.
He is a published author and poet whose work has appeared in many anthologies and literacy magazines. Among the most notable The Americas Review (University of Texas Press, 1997), American Poetry Confronts the 1990s (Black Tie Press 1990), The Limits of Silence (Asterion Press 1991), Poesida (Ollantay Press, 1995) and Floating Borderlands: Twenty Five Years of Latin American Poetry in The United States, (University of Washington Press, 1998).
Literary journals include Mayrena, The James White Review, The Evergreen Chronicles, Philomel and others. He is a contributing writer to Queer Brown Voices, the first anthology focusing on documenting the history of the LGBTQ+ latinx movement in the United States and Puerto Rico. He has curated numerous visual arts shows, including Co-curating Stonewall @ 50 in 2019 at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery showcasing 129 artists which became the largest LGBTQ+ art exhibition in Philadelphia History.
He was a co-founder of the Philadelphia Latin American Film Festival, and has directed shows for First Person Arts, and has performed at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. He currently serves as the President of the Board of the Da Vinci Arts Alliance, is on the Artist Advisory board of Taller Puertorriqueño, is a member of the board of the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and is a founding member of the international artist collective Dissident Bodies with members in the USA, Mexico, Colombia, and India and is a member of the Dislocada artist collective in Philadelphia. He was also co founder along with the artist poet and writer Susan DiPronio, of Wicked Gay Ways (a literary and arts journal devoted to queer erotica) and is currently its art editor. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his work in health care, LGBTQ civil rights and arts advocacy.
BIO
Bio
Eva Recio, Art Consultant.
Eva Recio is an art consultant specializing in promoting socially engaged art. She holds a B.A./M.A. in Geography and History with a concentration in Art History from the Universidad de Salamanca and the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and an M.Ed. in Spanish Teaching from Saint Joseph’s University. She has also recently completed a M.Ed. in Educational Entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania. With a deep commitment to the intersection of art, culture, and social change, Eva collaborates as art consultant with Casa Duende to support exhibitions and performances that challenge conventional narratives and foster critical dialogue between artists and communities. In addition to her role at Casa Duende, Eva is the founder of NomadMinds Travel, an initiative that fosters cross-cultural understanding through immersive educational experiences. Her work reflects her passion for art as a tool for social transformation, and aligns with Casa de Duende’s vision of fostering dialogue between artists and communities. 
Bio
Johann Sarmiento-Klapper, Co-Founder & Co-Editor, Dos Lenguas Press
Johann Sarmiento-Klapper is a researcher and designer of multimodal experiences by training, and poet, printmaker, and amateur bookmaker -among other things. He received his doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction / Socio-cultural System Design from Drexel University. Originally from Bucaramanga (Colombia), he participated in the poetry workshop at the Industrial University of Santander and in several of the Santander poets' gatherings coordinated by the Colombian writer Rosalba Suarez. Currently, he is a member of the “voces latinoamericanas” artist collective in Philadelphia. He has designed and published several plaquettes featuring his own poems as well as those poets such as León de Greiff, Roger Santivañez, Miguel Bacho, Roberto Bolaño, Coral Bracho, Pablo Neruda, Dylan Thomas, and Billy Collins. He is also the editor of the anthology of Latin American women poets, “Are These the Sweet Girls of Latin America?” In addition to being the co-founder of doslenguas press, he is also a member of the organizing committee of the Poetry Festival and the Latin American Book Fair in Philadelphia.
Johann is also Co-founder and Editor along side David Acosta of the editorial house; Dos Lenguas Press. Dos Lenguas Press, a project of Casa de Duende operates separately from Casa de Duende as an independent, bilingual literary press linking the exuberant creativity of the Spanish and English-speaking worlds. Our work fosters dialogue among unique latinx authors, curious readers and engaged communities - celebrating and renewing our shared literary heritage across geographies. We publish a wide range of genres—including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, essay, drama, and literary translation. We aim to honor our diaspora’s bilingual reality, bridging cultures, encouraging diverse narratives, and creating spaces where our stories speak in two tongues but share one heart. We seek and promote bold, unique, memorable, daring, and imaginative works that break, play with, critique, destroy and or honor the incredible legacy of Latin American literature wherever it might live.
““Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind… every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.”.”