"I don't write fiction. To me I've always felt that I'm keeping the books. I just want people to experience the every day glimpses of life that I see, that to me are sometimes heartbreaking, but most of the time incredibly beautiful. And its amazing how I'll be on the bus and maybe something I'm carrying will start a conversation. Somebody sees me with my notebooks and say "se vaya al escuela?" And I'm like "no". They think I'm a student. It's like no, "Soy escritora", And then they just start telling you these stories." It is these stories that form the foundation for the words and poems that are pressed between the pages of her work.

Marisela is always looking to discover new voices and link up with other artists to explore the various possibilities with language. "I'm really excited about collaborations between generations. I think it's just possibility. It's the idea of taking it one step further, or just moving it up a little bit. I had been doing readings for a while when I ran into somebody I went to junior high school with who happened to be a conguero. He said, "you know you have a natural rhythm in your voice," and I said "I do?" And he's like "yeah, read something", and he started tapping on the table, and he was accompanying me, you know. And I thought, well maybe I should try this. So we started doing that, [reading to] congas and bongos. Then I went back to my piano, which I have not touched in about 30 years."

On November 16th Marisela read her work at the Oakland Museum, Una America Nueva as part of the Hecho en Califas Festival featuring intergenerational performances by local spoken word and musical guests. "I'm liking that La Peņa is mixing things up. You know, and it's not just a straight okay, we're gonna have, you know, the usual suspects, you know what I mean? I think La Peņa is inclusive, and that's what's important. I was having and argument with a friend of mine who wants to open a bookstore, and she wants it just to be a Latino bookstore, and I said, Teresa, you know, that's been done, we gotta open the doors a little bit wider, it's gotta be everybody. And that's one thing that I've learned. And I said yeah, there are other positive and progressive, conscious people out there that are not buying everything that's being fed to us."