Meet Elvira Carrizal-Dukes, Ph.D., MFA | Writer & Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elvira Carrizal-Dukes, Ph.D., MFA and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elvira, every day, we about how much execution matters, but we think ideas matter as well. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
After years of working separately, my husband and I teamed up realizing that our skills could be combined to create an independent comics publisher. I’m a writer and Ronnie Dukes is an artist and we are both wanting to center the lives of women and BIPOC in our narrative visual work. By owning the means of production, we are able to bring minoritized voices and faces to the forefront, while mentoring and guiding others to do the same. Our mission is to produce comics that revision a promising future for historically subjugated communities.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m a writing artist with an academic background in journalism, Chicano studies, theatre arts, film, and rhetoric and composition. I’m a Xicana first-generation college graduate with a bachelors, a master of fine arts, and a doctorate degree. I was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in New Mexico. I’m fluent in English and Spanish and am learning Japanese. Our comics at DUKEScomics.com are multilingual – English, Spanish, and Japanese. We are proud to have been invited to Tokyo Comic Con where our graphic novel “A.W.O.L. (Japanese edition)” made it’s international premiere. We got to where we are today by constantly learning, sharing our creative work, producing and collaborating with others, and adapting to change and being flexible. We overcame challenges by continuing to move forward and on to the next project. Some lessons we’ve learned along the way is to not hesitate to create our own ideas. What we want the world to know about us is that we are one writer and one artist from working-class families and minoritized communities. Our work is adventurous, fun, and anime-inspired. We feature intelligent female protagonists working in the military and in science and engineering professions. We look forward to bringing more stories to life in the near future and more work will be available at DUKEScomics.com.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If you visit the El Paso, Texas, U.S.-Mexico borderland city, I would take you to scenic drive at night so you could see the lights of Juarez, Mexico, from on top of a mountain. I would also take you to visit the UTEP campus to see the Bhutanese-inspired architecture and some of the public art on campus. We would go to Juarez to visit the parks and museums and to eat and drink at delicious Mexican restaurants. We would visit the El Paso Museum of Art and the El Paso Museum of History. I would also take you to San Elizario and Socorro, Texas, to visit smaller colonias and to participate in artistic and cultural events. We would hang out at Lincoln Park – a.k.a. Chicano Park of El Paso. I would introduce you to local artist Laura Turon, David Fig of Augment El Paso, and Lucha Libre professional Cassandro El Exotico. We would go shopping at Chuco Relic and Proper Printshop. We would listen and dance to live music by Frontera Bugalu. Also, we would drink craft beer at DeadBeach Brewery.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Shoutout to EqualFootingCharity.org whose mission is to empower women and underdogs in the film industry to tell their stories and get their projects off the ground.

Website: www.dukescomics.com

Instagram: dukescomics_publisher

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doctor-dukes-%E2%9C%8A%F0%9F%8F%BD-02a23710/

Twitter: @dra_dukes

Facebook: dukescomics.com

Youtube: Ronnie Dukes DUKEScomics

Image Credits
DUKEScomics.com