An evening with JD Estrada

In march of this year, I did the first of 3 events I’ve done so far which have included “An Evening with JD Estrada”, my participation in the Puerto Rico Comic Con, and an event at Libros AC where I presented Shadow of a Human along with Twenty Veinte and my first Spanish poetry collection.

For “An Evening with JD Estrada”, I went to the Poet’s Passage in Old San Juan and wanted to do something a lot more casual and relaxed since I wasn’t presenting new material, but instead sharing my up to that moment published work.

It was relaxed, it was fun, it was different. My brother bought me a bottle of red wine and I did some wine sharing. After a brief intro, my book event started with me on the guitar lol. Not the easiest way to break the ice, but something I’d been wanting to do for so long because singing in public is something I’d only done twice before: in high school, singing a musicalized version of a poem and at my wedding, where I took an old song and gave it a new spin.

So to put it lightly, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing lol. Luckily it wasn’t too bad even though I probably committed mistakes on each and every song, but for my first public performance, not bad.

After that I proceeded to read poetry from all my works, including Only Human and the Daydreams on the Sherbet Shore. I wanted to show that even in my novel and my short story collections there is poetry in both and that as such, poetry is in my life and shall be in my work.

I did a short set list, 5 songs in total, read from all 5 books I’d published and enjoyed the company of friends, family, and some wonderful surprises in the form of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Next week I’ll be posting all the videos I have of the event, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who went and to everyone who supports me in all my random things.

Cheers and til next we see each other,

Peace, love, and maki rolls

Ps.:

Here are a couple of pics of the event, enjoy.