Flores emerged as a spoken‑word artist in the mid‑1990s, [6] co‑founding performance groups such as Youth Speaks, Brave New Voices and Los Delicados. [7] He appeared on Seasons 3 and 4 of HBO’s Def Poetry and toured internationally, performing in Cuba, Mexico, and El Salvador. [8] [9] His work blends interview‑based theater with indigenous and Latino healing traditions to address topics like gentrification, incarceration, border militarization, and police violence. [10]
He has authored several plays, including We Have Iré (premiered 2019), Plaças: The Most Dangerous Tattoo, and On the Hill: I Am Alex Nieto. [11] [12] These works have been commissioned and performed by institutions such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Pregones Theater, Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the SF Arts Commission. [13]
Writing
In 2003, Flores published his novel Along the Border Lies, which received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. His debut poetry collection, We Still Be: Poems and Performances (El Martillo Press, 2023), earned the American Book Award in 2024. [14] The book is a fusion of performance poetry, memoir, and activism, reflecting on his experiences in San Francisco’s Mission District in the context of contemporary Latino life. [15]
