Roy Conboy is a Latino/Irish/Indigenous writer and teacher whose poetic plays have been seen in the struggling black boxes on the edges of the mainstream theatre in Los Angeles, Santa Ana, San Francisco, San Antonio, Denver, and more; and whose musical plays for young people have toured extensively in California. His poetry has been seen in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Orphic Lute, Third Estate’s Quaranzine, and Freshwater Literary Journal. His poetic radio drama Hue can be heard online at Barewire Theatre Company. He recently retired from 35 years of teaching, including three decades as the head of the San Francisco State University playwrighting program, where he created multiple programs that gave thousands of students a place to find and raise their voices.
Behind the Scenes with Roy Conboy, author of ‘Native Soul’
Roy talks about the way he crafts his poetry to showcase the layers of his identity–Indigenous/Latino/Irish. He says (to paraphrase) that we’re often like a car speeding down the road, dropping things to lighten the load. Often, one of the things we drop is culture. His job as a writer and a teacher involves stopping the car and picking up the things that shouldn’t have been dropped.