LA LISTA: A Latinx Writers Podcast

This week: We close out the season hungover and toothless, Thulio serves Princess Diana street style before partying until 5 a.m., Rubén nearly goes straight after getting showered with compliments at a cocktail party serving poppers over ice, and a three-hour grifter documentary has Thulio gagged while Rubén wonders why we keep giving scammers the cinematic universe treatment. Plus our first annu...

A QUEER CHICANO WRITER FROM EAST LA, ÓRALE The podcast comes full circle for Episode 200 as first-ever guest Richard Villegas Jr. returns to talk about leaving a teaching career to pursue writing, weathering COVID and the writers' strike with writing as his North Star, turning his stories from two decades of public school teaching into the memoir Your a Fat Suckr Bich: Notes on the Merry but Peril...

This week: LA kicks off spooky season with 100-degree weather, Thulio sobs his way through Before It's Too Late , Rubén finds live theatre growing in a Topanga tinderbox, a COVID-conscious lesbian bar in Western Mass sends woke discourse into a tailspin, and we consider how logging off and shutting up for a while might actually be part of the creative process. Plus a Punch-Up on putting down Taylo...

A MODERN FOLKLORIST LATINX WRITER Angela M. Sánchez shares growing up Chicanx in Los Angeles, how experiencing homelessness as a teenager shaped her commitment to telling stories about people too often overlooked, finding her creative voice through anime, comics, and fanfiction, going from education and philanthropy to building community with Latinx in Animation, writing for Primos , Dora , and th...

This week: Thulio closes out summer with a Y2K Palm Springs girls' trip, Rubén checks out Animal LA with seemingly every gay in the city, Flo from Progressive reveals herself at the Groundlings, Mr. Kansas earns honorary membership in the LGBTQ+ alphabet, and Hollywood's collapse sends the writers running back to live theater. Plus a Punch-Up on keeping Ryan Murphy away from your life rights... an...

A NO SABO ECUADORIAN-AMERICAN SAD BOY WRITER FROM QUEENS Christopher Moncayo-Torres shares growing up Ecuadorian American in Queens as a recovering no sabo and latchkey kid, discovering writing through college creative writing classes and New York theater spaces, building community through The Moth and Fail Better Arts, turning his relationship with his dad into the Hollywood Fringe show No Sabo ,...

This week: A rainy Labor Day weekend ruins Thulio's beach fantasy, Animal enters the LA gay bar group chat, Olive Garden becomes a Mid-City gay haven with bottle service and an iPad baby, Stella Lefty is not beating the nepo-baby theft allegations, and HBO's  Lanterns turns a gay Green Lantern into Yellowstone cosplay. Plus a Punch-Up on letting the Harry Potter reboot die already... and giving Br...

A CHILANGA MOM WRITER Natalia Mejía shares growing up in Mexico City, starting her TV career straight out of college writing Mexican telenovelas, moving to Los Angeles to get her MFA at UCLA and learn to write in English while keeping her voice, working in U.S. rooms like  Snowfall and FBI: International , and exploring motherhood, contradiction, and women caught between worlds in her work. Instag...

This week: Thulio makes his triumphant WeHo return and somehow wakes up in Glendale, Rubén gets accused of dining & dashing at Dave & Buster's, a pool day delivers Scorpio slander and a blown-out floatie, Margaret Qualley lets the dogs out in chopped Chanel, and Paramount's Warner Bros. Discovery bid becomes a billionaire hostage negotiation. Plus a Punch-Up on BYOT pool-party etiquette... and Air...

A MAGICALLY REALISTIC, QUEER COLOMBIAN LATINÉ WRITER MAKES AN ATTEMPT Dylan Guerra shares growing up queer and Colombian in Miami, being raised by artist parents in a world of improv, stand-up, and DIY theater, finding his voice after moving to New York and writing the wildly personal solo show Find Him , getting staffed on The Other Two , and using ghosts, monsters, grief, comedy, and queer Latin...

This week: Thulio fights Karl the Fog at Outside Lands, Slayyyter saves a flop summer with "Brand New Chanel," Heated Rivalry casting discourse demands meat on the bones, Rubén turns Greg Araki's I Want Your Sex into an AMC Burbank side quest, and streamers double down on their video-podcast content-churn era. Plus a Punch-Up on job interviews with more rounds than Interview with the Vampire...  a...

A QUEER LATIN AMERICAN WRITER-DIRECTOR Fiorella Vescovi shares growing up in Montevideo, Uruguay, feeling trapped until sports opened a path to the U.S., driving from Missouri to Los Angeles with emo music and black nails, finding herself beyond acting by falling in love with writing and directing, joining the queer series And Also With You , and turning her father's experience during Uruguay's di...

This week: Thulio becomes a gay cowboy ghost-story extra, free LA archery turns him into Katniss Everdeen, Rubén finds artistic hope at a queer film night at Akbar, Comic-Con throws every Ryan into the MCU, and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey somehow makes Ancient Greece straight. Plus a Punch-Up on the gay guide to escalator etiquette... and late-stage capitalism turning everyone at LAX into the...

A MEXICAN-AMERICAN WRITER AND ARMY VETERAN FROM CHICAGO Jon-Alexander Genson shares growing up Mexican-American in northern Illinois, joining the Army to escape his hometown before a deployment to Guantanamo Bay helped him start accepting who he was, studying creative writing at Illinois State, breaking in through the Writers Guild Foundation's Veteran Writing Project and Support Staff Training Pr...

This week: Thulio survives The Abbey phone-theft industrial complex, Rubén's office job turns him into a fluorescent-lit shell of a woman, Love Island signs off and World Cup brain rot clocks in, Erling Haaland becomes the internet's strangest tall king, and The Great LA Exodus has everyone asking whether the dream is still worth the rent. Plus a Punch-Up on FIFA refs choosing favorites... and Riv...

A CAN'T STOP, WON'T STOP LATINX WRITER Lisa Quintela shares growing up Cuban-American between New Jersey, Miami, and New York, how her parents' harrowing escape from Cuba shaped her drive and storytelling, moving from Tisch-trained actor to journalist to lawyer before writing a pilot about her family that brought her to LA, breaking into TV on The L Word: Generation Q , and using her legal backgro...

This week: Thulio returns from Gilmore Girls country and enters his World Cup Brazilian era, Rubén turns 35 and discovers his head is now extra-wide at Warby Parker, a queer vaquero fundraiser cracks the TikTok marketing code, Love Island takes over the algorithm, and the feed is fake but the clips are forever. Plus a Punch-Up on airlines forcing broke bitches to gate-check their carry-ons... and...

A GRATEFUL, CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC, IN-HIS-HEAD, OCD LATINX WRITER Eugene Garcia-Cross shares growing up half Puerto Rican in Erie, Pennsylvania, feeling like the Latino kid in his hometown and the gringo cousin in Puerto Rico, trading a decade in academia for a last-chance leap into TV writing, breaking in through the NBC Writers Program and writer's PA jobs, and finding his old-school sitcom drea...

This week: Corporate Pride is dead (but the Chase Sapphire rainbow logo lives in our hearts), Thulio dodges the WeHo Pride tax, Rubén hits Club Cobra and begs DJs to let a song breathe, the LA mayoral race takes a post-Spencer Pratt breath, and Unc cinema faces the rise of Gen Z excellence. Plus a Punch-Up on Y2K parties with no whimsy... and nosy gays turning open vs. monogamous relationship disc...

A CUBADORIAN WRITER-ACTION DIRECTOR Michelle Salcedo shares growing up Cuban and Ecuadorian in Miami, turning her parents' immigrant love story into creative fuel, finding her voice through years of writing features at the library, making her Sundance-supported short ' Cinnamon Skin ,' breaking into action with her feature ' Switch and Bait ,' and exploring why her work keeps returning to underest...

This week: Thulio gets spit-roasted by ailments, Brown & Out 8 has its final-final encore at the WeHo Pride Arts Festival, Akbar delivers DFMO antics, Gen Z boos AI and war criminals at commencement, and Gen Z filmmakers take over the box office with Obsession and Backrooms . Plus a Punch-Up on NPCs asking too damn much... and Spectrum, AT&T, and every other company failing to provide the service...

A LATINO WRITER WHO WOULD LIKE EVERYTHING TO BE 10% WEIRDER, THANK YOU Alberto Roldán shares growing up Puerto Rican in rural central Pennsylvania, having his artistic world cracked open by Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia , detouring through Northwestern, NPR, and political work, navigating the long road to his first staff job, learning when to let the clown play before the professor takes over, a...

This week: Thulio gets fed and read at Courier Cumbia, Rubén goes full wilderness girlie at Point Mugu, Brown & Out 8 gets a free encore at the WeHo Pride Arts Festival, Instagram launches "Instants" for some reason, and AI discourse hits  Hacks , The Comeback , and our last nerve. Plus a Punch-Up on the DACA renewal backlog... and a punch-around on bad beard lines, AI Met Gala delusion, and peopl...

A DRIVEN LATINA WRITER Christina Piña shares growing up in a loud Cuban-American Miami household, secretly applying to USC against her dad's wishes, cutting her teeth through years of assistant jobs before breaking in through the Paramount Writers Mentoring Program, rising from staff writer to supervising producer, breaking down strategies for how Latino writers can survive in a shifting industry,...

This week: Thulio survives a UTI (Rat Beach will pay for its crimes), summer is coming (Lorde hive rise), The Devil Wears Prada 2 review, Beyoncé Act III conspiracy theories, and TV fellowship season is among us... let's get in formation. Plus a Punch-Up on looksmaxxers... and immigrant stories that still treat us like set dressing. La Lista Podcast host Rubén Mendive and writer Thulio DaSilva dit...