New Writing Series Spring 2019

Patrick Coleman & Kazim Ali -- Wednesday, April 17, 2019 -- Geisel Library, Seuss Room at 5:00 pm

Patrick Coleman

Kazim Ali

Patrick Coleman is the author of Fire Season , which won the Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry from Tupelo Press. His writing has appeared in Zócalo Public Square, Black Warrior Review, ZYZZYVA, and The Writer’s Chronicle , and his first novel, The Churchgoer , will be published by Harper Perennial on July 30, 2019. He is the assistant director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California–San Diego. He earned a BA at the University of California–Irvine and an MFA at Indiana University, and he was editor/contributor for the exhibition catalogue The Art of Music and a contributor to Into India: South Asian Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art . He lives in Ramona, California, with his wife and two daughters.

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom to Muslim parents of Indian, Iranian and Egyptian descent. He received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Albany-SUNY, and an M.F.A. from New York University. His books encompass several volumes of poetry, including Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. Ali has taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a professor of Literature and Writing at the University of California, San Diego.

Gabrielle Civil -- Wednesday, April 24, 2019 -- Geisel Library, Seuss Room at 5:00 pm
	Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, writer, and poet, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered almost fifty original performance art works around the world, including as a Fulbright Fellow in Mexico. She collaborated with Vladimir Cybil Charlier on “Tourist Art,” a Haitian image + text project. She has also contributed her writing to Small Axe, Art21, Poem-a-Day, Kitchen Table Translation, Obsidian , and more. Her memoir in performance art Swallow the Fish was named an Entropy “Best Non-Fiction Book” of 2017. Her latest book Experiments in Joy (2019) focuses on black feminist collaborations and solos. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University and currently serves as MFA Faculty in Creative Writing and BFA Faculty in Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts.

Tommy Pico -- Tuesday, April 30, 2019 -- The Loft @ UCSD, 6:30 pm Doors, 7:00 pm Show

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the author of IRL (Birds LLC, 2016), Nature Poem (Tin House Books, 2017), Junk (forthcoming from Tin House Books), and the zine series Hey, Teebs. He was the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that published art and writing from 2008–2013. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and a 2016 Tin House summer poetry scholar. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.

Co-sponsored with UCSD's Ethnic Studies Department

MFA Alumni Reading: Paola Capó García, Keith McCleary, Hanna Tawater -- Wednesday, May 8, 2019 -- Literature Building Room 155 (de Certeau) at 5:00 pm

Paola Capó-García is the author of CLAP FOR ME THAT’S NOT ME (Rescue Press, 2018). She earned her BS in Magazine Journalism from Syracuse University, an MA in English from UC Davis, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UC San Diego. Her poems have appeared in The Volta , Poetry Society of America , Academy of American Poets , NightBlock , and others. She is the co-founder/editor of the literary/arts journal littletell , alongside Maria Flaccavento. Originally from San Juan, PR, she now lives in San Diego, CA, where she teaches 12th grade English.

Keith McCleary is a writer and graphic designer from New York. He is the author of the graphic novels KILLING TREE QUARTERLY and TOP OF THE HEAP, as well as the co-author, with Sophia Starmack, of the audio novella THE GOTHICKERS. His work has appeared in Heavy Metal, A capella Zoo, and Weave, among other places, and he is co-editor of the STATES OF TERROR horror anthology series from Ayahausca Publishing. He is also the Comics Curator at Entropy. Keith holds an MFA from UC San Diego, where he teaches on composition and comics. His first novel, CIRCUS AND THE SKIN, was published in December 2018 by Kraken Press.

Hanna Tawater is the author of Reptilia (Ayahuasca Publishing, 2018), and completed her MFA in writing with an emphasis in interdisciplinary poetry at UC San Diego in 2014. Some of her work can be found in Pacific Review, The Mondegreen, Dirty Chai, New Delta Review, White Stag, Black Candies: Gross and Unlikable, The Radvocate, States of Terror vols. 1 & 2, and Amor Forense: Birds in Shorts City an anthology of border-region translations, as well as various online collaborative projects. She currently serves as the Book Reviews editor at Entropy.

MFA Readings- 1st Year Students- Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - Literature Building Room 155 (de Certeau) at 5:00 pm

MFA Readings- Graduating Students- Wednesday, May 29, 2019 - Literature Building Room 155 (de Certeau) at 5:00 pm

The New Writing Series is brought to you by the Literature Department and the Division of Arts and Humanities

The New Writing Series thanks the Department of Visual Arts for providing us with the SME Presentation Space

For more information contact Professor Brandon Som.