Sunday, April 12, 2026 7:00 pm NHCC | Wells Fargo Auditorium 2026 AfroMundo Festival: “Futurism: Manifesting the Envisioned” Featured Regions: U.S. & U.S. Territories: Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Mariana Islands Literary Reading with Samoan storyteller Gabby Langkilde; Puerto Rican poet, Dr. Eleuterio Santiago-Diaz; and Virgin Islands’ author, Tiphanie Yanique. Followed by panel discussion and Q&A moderated by Dr. Belinda Deneen Wallace, Director of UNM’s Liberal Arts and Integrative Studies Program. The 2026 AfroMundo Festival is free to the general public with limited seating and includes films, concerts, literature, oral traditions, panel discussions, culinary and other arts to foster a greater understanding of our shared humanity. Learn more at afromundo.org. PLEASE MAKE YOUR RESERVATION HERE! Panel discussion with: Gabby Langkilde is a Samoan storyteller and the founder and executive editor of Pasefika Presence. Born and raised on the island of Tutuila in American Samoa, her love for storytelling was cultivated early in life —listening to ancient Samoan legends shared by her grandfather and later crafting her own tales for cousins, friends, and family to enjoy. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Harvard College, where she wrote ‘Pasefika Presence,’ one of the first recurring columns in The Harvard Crimson to center Pacific Islander perspectives and issues. After graduating, she returned home to American Samoa and worked as an eighth-grade social studies teacher, and in 2023, she founded Pasefika Presence as an online, submission-based magazine uplifting Pacific Islander stories and art. Rooted in the same commitment to centering Pacific Islander perspectives as her original column, Pasefika Presence began as a way to engage her students in Pacific storytelling and has since grown into an international platform that has published two issues and received hundreds of submissions from creatives across the Pacific and its diasporas. Gabby went on to be awarded a Fulbright U.S. Graduate Award to pursue research in Auckland, New Zealand, and received an East-West Center Graduate Degree Fellowship to complete her master’s degree in Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Today, she continues to guide Pasefika Presence while using storytelling, education, and research to empower Pacific communities and expand space for Pasefika voices. https://www.pasefikapresence.org Dr. Eleuterio Santiago Diaz is a poet, professor, and literary critic. Upon graduation from the University of Puerto Rico, Santiago-Díaz worked as a teacher of Spanish, physical education and industrial arts, and as a librarian in Puerto Rican elementary schools. He earned a Master’s degree in Spanish from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese a...
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