Davina Agudelo-Ferreira spotlights Latino voices through her indie publishing company

Davina Agudelo-Ferreria is a Colombian-American bilingual poet, writer and the founder of her independent publishing company, Alegría Publishing. 

Alegría Publishing was created in 2020 to spotlight modern Latino/x stories and give a special opportunity for upcoming writers to have a platform to present their work. 

From a young age, poetry held a special place for Agudelo-Ferreira. Growing up, she loved reading the works of many authors such as Alejandra Pizarnik, Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez. Agudelo-Ferreira would often read and write poetry which transported her into a different world while living during the difficult era of 1980s and 1990s in Colombia. 

Agudelo-Ferreira was born in Miami and raised in Medellín until the age of 17. After graduating from high school, she came back to the U.S. to pursue a better life and to attend college. Agudelo-Ferreira stayed with an aunt for the first eight months and has lived on her own ever since. During her college years, she was able to pay for her education with two odd jobs while navigating life in a new country. 

The immigrant experience did take a toll at first for Agudelo-Ferreira while she navigated through  culture shock, new system and way of life in the United States. She was able to independently overcome the challenges and prepare what was ahead for the future. “Overall, it was just the difficulty and the mental … I think mentally it affects you, too, while being on your own, away from everything and everyone you know. As a young person, it was pretty difficult but that’s how it all started,” she explained.  

Choosing a name for her business reminds her of the inner spirit and strength that the Latino community carries. “For me, Alegría is this state of being no matter the circumstance of what's happening in the outside world,” she explains. Agudelo-Ferreira also characterizes the word with describing the Latino community overall and the resilience that withholds. “The spirit of Latinas and Latinos … we are people that are resilient by nature. We are people that have overcome as people in different countries and as people that come as immigrants, people that come as undocumented. We go through extreme hardships and challenges, yet our spirit in nature is joyful,” she said.   

Agudelo-Ferreira is also the director of the Alegría Mobile Bookstore, which was created back in 2019. Inspired by the antique bookstores that she often visited back home in Medellín, her love of literature and books turned into a passion project. The mobile bookstore has traveled throughout California and has participated in many festivals such as the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and Feria del Libro en Español de Los Ángeles, LeaLA. It has also traveled to schools in underserved communities.  

This project became a remarkable experience for not only Agudelo-Ferreira but also for many visitors that visit her bookstore. “It’s incredible because it’s an old van. I didn't have the budget for a super fancy mobile but I’m manifesting. I think it has been successful and it has touched so many people’s lives,” she commented. As the success of the bookstore grows, Agudelo-Ferreira hopes to invest to get a bigger van in order to continue to expand her travels of her love of bilingual literature to other states across the United States. “I think it’s beautiful to see something that you created from your heart,” she said.  

She also runs the bilingual Alegría magazine, which was founded in 2012 and is published digitally and printed quarterly. The magazine is a project she hopes will provide a platform and share stories of the Latino community with all types of interests. 

When it comes to Latinos in the publishing industry, there is a lack of representation. It was found that in 2019, that “the estimated percentage of Hispanic workers ranged from 8 percent in the publishing subsector,” according to a 2021 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.  In 2022, it was reported that “8.13% of writers and authors were Hispanic,” according to Data USA.   

CALÓ News sat down with Agudelo-Ferreria in which she talks about her passion for literature and the importance of providing a platform for upcoming Latino writers. 

What sparked your interest and eventually falling in love with poetry and literature? 

Growing up in Colombia, every time things were difficult in both my personal life and country, I took refuge in literature so books for me became my happy place.  I would read a lot of the classics and books became my healing pastime. Then from there, I started to write my own poetry and short stories. I actually had a routine right after I would come home from high school. Everyday, I would change my uniform, lock myself in the bedroom and just read and write all day and night. I started to fall in love with it and I just felt that it created a positive effect on my life. I feel that books became my companion and ever since it was something that I had from very early on and it had just grown and transformed throughout the years. 

How was Alegra publishing formed? How has it expanded into Alegría media? 

We started with the magazine 12 years ago called Alegría Magazine. For me to create something that was upscale, surreal with great quality and showing people that we are deserving of high-quality media. The magazine was successful for many years. When the pandemic came, I was able to reconnect a lot with poetry which was my first love. As a writer, I think through my own rediscovery of poetry myself of something that I have not forgotten but didn't think would be published or reseen that I only wrote for myself. At that moment we already had all the digital integration of the magazine and Instagram was the platform where we were most active. I created a contest online for Latinx poets to share poetry based on our experience. I didn’t think a lot of people would submit to share their thoughts via poetry. We had almost 200 submissions and there were incredible poets such as Latinas and all over the United States. As I was reading their work, I thought these voices and work were so touching and moving. I thought of who would be publishing them. The answer was, no one. In the publishing industry there are the big five traditional publishing companies that publish most of the big best sellers but we are highly underrepresented. There have been many organizations throughout the decades that have been advocating for this type of work but because of lack of resources and support, we are not able to do as much as we deserve. As an independent media company, I wanted to be part of that. That’s how we started with poetries and anthologies which were very successful. From there, I wanted to contribute to promote more of our voices out there. We have talent, not lack of talent. There is a lack of resources, spaces and lack of representation.  

What were the challenges in becoming a publisher and while growing your business?  

Countless! There are so many challenges because you’re doing the work that a few people have attempted to do by a large scale that you are modeling. As crazy as that sounds, when it hasn’t been done the same way that you're doing. You have no reference unless you look up to people in other markets with different types of capital and the access to it. Number one, I think by knowing about having a great model before of people that have done it before you. So when you’re a trailblazer in any industry that is something that you come across. Number two, having the same marketing budget. Marketing is everything when it comes to book publishing because some of these huge books make it to the big New York Times bestseller and most have thousands in marketing. It’s hard to compete because of the numbers. Number three is the distribution because you can do alot of online distribution but the big distribution houses don’t prioritize Latinx titles. It's not a priority nor are they educated about Latinx and bilingual literature. I think that’s one of the few biggest challenges. 

How did you come up with an idea of forming a mobile bookstore?  

I created the bookstore back in 2019, before creating the publishing division in 2020. Even before I knew I was going to create the mobile bookstore. It was created out of my passion and desire for people to share the books. I grew up reading and bringing Latin-American books in both English and Spanish from some of the writers that I grew up reading from Latin America. As a teenager, I used to go into little antique bookstores in Medellín. I wanted to share special antique first edition books from these book stores, especially here in Los Angeles where the population is so big where there are so many Latinos and Spanish is so widely spoken. It came from a desire to share my love for books and creative writing. That’s how it started, I didn't have a business model or anything like that. To my surprise people really connected with it. What I think it’s interesting is that what makes us different is that we don't only feature Latin American literature. Besides being the mobile bookstore, I created the interior of the books like a world so people can go in where they can take pictures and bridge into culture, literature and the digital age.  

As being a bilingual poet and writer, why was it important to provide a space in both languages through your publishing division? 

Spanish is my first language so of course I will always love my Spanish. My whole family speaks Spanish, it's the language of family for me. So even in that sense if I want my mom or my dad  to read my books, I need to write it in Spanish. It’s the language of my ancestors, it's the language that I grew up speaking and it connects to my roots. And in English, I've been in the U.S. now for about 25 years. I’ve done all my education, college, and everything has taken place in the U.S. I’m also American, that’s also important. I think that’s the beauty of it and that's why it's so nuanced because as we know there’s people that identify as Latinos that don’t speak Spanish but their family and heritage are [as] Latinos. There’s other ones like me who came here older, so English is our second-language and we speak both. Also, there’s people that can speak both but they probably don’t know the rules of one of the languages. So they ride on the one they grew up riding on. I think it is very individual … in my case I’ve been part of both worlds which makes sense to me. It became part of my identity but I feel that it’s particular for each person. For me, the bilingual aspect of our company is key because our experience as Latinos is not one color, it's multidimensional, it's very nuanced and having that freedom to have expressions from our cities, twins and flavor from our own place. I think in literature we have a space for that. It has the flavor of where we come from.   

What type of legacy do you want to leave behind through your platform?   

I think legacy is how much of the talents that have been given or the possibilities through my hard work. I believe there are some God-given talents or “talentos” or “dones” that are given and I think in the end, how do you use those as a service to humanity? In my case it has become very clear this is one way in which I can share and serve through my love of books, literature and my culture. For me, my legacy is being able to serve through my talents so other people like me, other people that came from hardship and backgrounds and thought that they would never be able to publish their books or never think that they would be heard [are those] that I can actually help. My legacy is to help as many people as possible, to believe in the power of their dreams and make them come true.