Rina’s talent comes to life when performing her spoken word poetry. She has been the featured Spoken Word Performer for El Dorado County’s Poet Laureate program, a featured poet at Placerville’s Human Rights Day, and will be featured at Chataeu Duvall with the current Poet Laureate in November 2023. She was the featured poet for the Myrtle Tree art events Earth Data in 2022, Fireland in 2023, and will be a featured performer for the event Ripe Area, in 2024.
Rina is a collaborating artist in Myrtle Tree Arts Collective based out of Placerville, CA. She is the Co-Producer for Storytelling Sunday at The Green Room in Placerville, CA. She is the Associate Producer for the podcast Placertopia. Rina is dedicated to activism and an advocate for bringing the voices of underserved and underrepresented artists into the forefront of the arts community.
Rina was published in Art and Culture El Dorado’s chapbook Poets of the Firehouse Sessions, 2023. She has written and produced for Ms. Magazine.com. Her articles have been featured in The California Business Journal, dametraveler.com, and Performer Magazine. Her poetry has been featured in The Mountain Democrat, the literary journals Community Soliloquies, Lantern Magazine, and Coalesce.
Rina is a Master’s Degree candidate studying Library Science with a focus on Rare Book Curation and Cultural Archives at San Jose State University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature from Sacramento State University.
She is currently working on a prose poetry chapbook, as well as a creative non-fiction novel based on the female lineage of her Indigenous heritage. Her family line comes from the Purepecha people of the northwestern region of Michoacán, Mexico.
She is a proud single mother to her daughter Avalina. She is an advocate for women’s empowerment and volunteers to support human rights and environmental awareness campaigns. She is on the Human Rights Day Committee in Placerville, CA.
As a cultural and literary event coordinator, she was a creative designer for the Sugar Skull Art Walk project, 2023 and will be for 2024. Rina facilitated and hosted an event for the California poet Laureate, Lee Herrick, in 2023.
