Writing Now Reading Series

Structured around the work of several visiting contemporary writers, the Writing Now Reading Series and Seminar is a required course for CalArts MFA creative writing graduate students that showcases vibrant new modalities for writing that refresh today’s interconnected creative fields. Writing Now offers inspiring points of contact and critical conversation about writing process and practice between visiting writers, students and local audiences, with an eye for fostering the collaborative, the future-forward, and the unexpected in literature.

This fall, the series features readings and workshops with writers whose work is connected to the Creative Writing Program’s concentrations: Image & Text, Documentary Strategies, Writing & Performativity, and Writing & Its Publics.

How to Attend the Writing Now Readings Series

Readings will take place in Butler Building BB#4-G. Any location changes will be announced to the RSVP list and on the event pages.

RSVP Here

All visitors to campus are asked to be vaccinated. Visitors are also asked to check in when arriving on campus and obtain and wear a visitor badge. Click here to understand our visitor policies.

Spring 2024

Apr 18, 2024

4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Writing Now Symposium: Becoming the Archive

The "Becoming the Archive" symposium centers around the preservational and conservational efforts Southern Californian artists are making alongside local organizations to celebrate artistic voices, both individually and communally. Through a creative showcase and moderated panel, "Beyond the Archive" invites four individuals at the intersection of creativity and sustainability to discuss how past and present come together to inform their visions for the future. Guests include Chiwan Choi of Writ Large Projects, Carribean Fragoza of Huizache and the South El Monte Art Posse, Hailey Loman of the Los Angeles Contemporary Archives, and Jimmy Vega of Beyond Baroque.

Reception to follow.

Event Details

Mar 21, 2024

Writing Now Reading Series: Deborah Taffa, Raquel Gutiérrez, and Layli Long Soldier

Please join the Creative Writing MFA program in welcoming our special guests from our partners in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts!

READING Thursday, March 21 at 6 pm - Butler Building #4 - Deborah Taffa and Raquel Gutiérrez | Reception to follow. More info.

TALK Friday, March 22 at 10 am - Zoom - Layli Long Soldier | Email amccann@calarts.edu or csartistcoordinator@calarts.edu for link. More info.

SALON riday, March 22 at 1 pm - Langley - Deborah Taffa and Raquel Gutiérrez | Discussion of the week's events and IAIA/CalArts Partnership

Event Details

Feb 22, 2024

6:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Writing Now Reading Series: Anna Martine Whitehead

Anna Martine Whitehead is an artist, writer, choreographer, and curator. They make solos and collaborative work interrogating race, gender, time, and loss at the limits of performance and have shown work throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Whitehead has worked collaboratively or made significant contributions to the work of Keith Hennessy, Jesse Hewit, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Julien Previeux, and Spiral Q Puppet Theater. Since the recent death of Pope.L, they have been recirculating ‘Endurance Tests,’ a recurring column in Art Practical exploring Black creative practice, in their Substack. Recognized with many awards and fellowships, Whitehead has written about Blackness, queerness, and bodies in action for Art21 Magazine, C Magazine, frieze, Art Practical, Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings, and more. Whitehead is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture and the creator of FORCE!, an opera in three acts showing at REDCAT in LA this spring.

photo: Shireen Marisol Meraji

Event Details

Fall 2023

Writing Now: Javon Johnson

A salon-style reading and conversation concerning Writing and Performativity with poet, actor, and African American Studies professor Javon Johnson.

Javon Johnson’s research focuses on performance, blackness, African American literature, black pop culture, black feminist theory, black queer theory, masculinity studies, black sexualities, and ethnography. Johnson, a renowned spoken word poet, is a three-time national poetry slam champion and a four-time national finalist. He has appeared on HBO’s "Def Poetry Jam," BET’s "Lyric Café," TV One's "Verses & Flow," "The Steve Harvey Show," "The Arsenio Hall Show," "United Shades of America with Kamau Bell" on CNN. He also co-wrote a documentary titled "Crossover," which aired on Showtime in collaboration with the NBA and Nike. Johnson’s first book, Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities (Rutgers University Press 2017), unpacks some of the complicated issues that comprise performance poetry spaces and argues that the truly radical potential in slam and spoken word communities lies not just in proving literary worth, speaking back to power, or even in altering power structures, but instead in imagining and working towards altogether different social relationships. His second project, The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape (Northwestern University Press (2018) is a co-edited book that critically creatively explores Chiraq (a name that is an amalgamation of Chicago and Iraq as a way to call to the violence of certain parts of Chicago) as a space and as a term. Additionally, Johnson has published in Text & Performance Quarterly, Liminalities, QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, The Root, Huffington Post, and others.