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 

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Spring 2023

Writing Now Reading Series: Percival Everett

The New Yorker recently wrote of Percival Everett that he “has one of the best poker faces in contemporary American literature. The author of twenty-two novels, he excels at the unblinking execution of extraordinary conceits.” Since that article was published Everett has published another novel, Dr. No, which like so many of Everett’s novels could likely only have been conceived in a universe where Percival Everett writes novels. Dr. No follows closely on Booker Prize finalist The Trees, which revisits the story of Emmett Till and the history of lynching in America. Everett is a professor at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.  

Event Details

Blue Tomorrows - A Symposium with Corina Copp, Rebekah Weikel, & Missouri Williams

Blue Tomorrows brings together three artists whose work represents new ecologies at the intersections of writing and image-making. Through personal, political, and philosophical engagement attuned to the impermanent, the indeterminate, and the transcendent qualities of material practice, Corina Copp, Rebekah Weikel, and Missouri Williams each take distinct approaches to feminist world-making. The School of Critical Studies is honored to host a discussion of their work in poetry, criticism, cinema, and fiction.

Event Details

Writing Now Reading Series: Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Aisha was born and raised in Los Angeles. She earned a BA in English from Carleton College, an MA in Cultural Studies and Studio Art from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona. She is the author of The Fluency of Light, Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit, Borealis, and Captioning the Archives. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan.

Event Details


Fall 2022

Writing Now Reading Series: Carribean Fragoza

Writing Now Reading Series: Carribean Fragoza

Event DateEvent Date

Event LocationLocation

CalArts Campus

BB#4-G

A graduate of CalArts MFA writing program, Carribean Fragoza’s first book is the story collection, Eat the Mouth that Feeds You, and her arts/culture reviews and essays have been published in online national and international magazines such as Aperture, Los Angeles Review of Books, LA Weekly, KCET, Culture Strike, and Tropics of Meta. She is also the founder and co-director of the South El Monte Art Posse (SEMAP), a multi-disciplinary arts collective.

Reading(s) will be streamed via the Creative Writing Program's YouTube Channel.


For more information on the Writing Now Reading Series or for accessibility questions, please contact the Visiting Artist Coordinator at csartistcoordinator@calarts.edu