Show your wit in the Literary Skull contest

A Calaveras Literaria written by Arianna Nava, UC ANR Nutrition educator at Kings County.

Day of the Dead, or el Día de los Muertos, is celebrated on Nov. 2. Mexicans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds celebrate Día de los Muertos, a holiday celebrating the reaffirmation of Indigenous life.

Calaveras Literarias, or Literary Skulls, are compositions of verse and rhymes, originally from Mexico. These are typically circulated in the days leading up to the Day of the Dead. They are fun, irreverent expressions that usually satirize a well-known person or event by playfully parodying the inevitable death of those involved. 

UC ANR colleagues are invited to participate in a Literary Skull Contest. Have fun creating humorous rhymes and verses, reference current events, your friends, classes and more. Write a political critique or a social commentary. 

"A good Literary Skull is ingenious, ironic, subtle, uses caricatures and has a certain rhyme and rhythm. They can be in English, Spanish or bilingual (Spanglish)," said Ricardo Vela, manager of News & Information Outreach in Spanish. "We will have $75, $50 and $25 Amazon gift card prizes for the best Literary Calaveras." 

Linda Forbes wrote about her dentist:

My dentist

Every six months when I visit his chair

Enduring the pain and his critical stare

My dentist says there's a new problem tooth

And I question whether he's telling the truth

My insurance is bad, my dentist is rich

So I wanted to look at making a switch

Then one day I saw in the local paper

He had met La Muerta in a crazy caper

I think he might have been mentally ill

Since he tried to swallow his largest drill

Submit your Literary Skull to rvela@ucanr.edu by 5 p.m. Nov. 2.

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