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. 

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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

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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

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Myriam Gurba is the author of Creep: Accusations and Confessions, an essay collection described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as “one of the best books of the decade.” Her memoir Mean was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Gurba’s writing has been published by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Believer, and many other publications. Along with Roberto Lovato and David Bowles, she is a co-founder of Dignidad Literaria, a grassroots organization that opposes white supremacy in the publishing industry. She lives in California and loves it. 

"Myriam Gurba is the most fearless writer in America. And is most generous and kind to those who have no champion, while setting fire to the towers of the villainous. Creep is another beautifully daring book. Long may she reign."

—Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Good Night, Irene

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Henry Hoke reading and reception. Hoke is the author of five books, most recently the novel Open Throat (MCD/FSG) and the memoir Sticker (Bloomsbury). He co-created the performance series Enter>text in Los Angeles, and edits humor at The Offing. He is also an alum of the MFA Creative Writing program at CalArts. "An indictment of human culture, narrated by a mountain lion Henry Hoke's novel follows an observant—and starving—cougar living in the Los Angeles hills surrounding the Hollywood sign ... Though many readers will label Open Throat unconventional, this act of ravishing and outlandish imagination should be the norm, not the exception. At its best, fiction can make the familiar strange in order to bring readers and our world into scintillating focus. Open Throat is what fiction should be." Marie Helene Bertino, The New York Times

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Ronaldo V. Wilson, PhD, is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man (University of Pittsburgh, 2008), winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Prize, and Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books, 2009), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry in 2010. His latest books are Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2015), finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and Lucy 72 (1913 Press, 2018). Co-founder of the Black Took Collective, Wilson is also a mixed media artist, dancer, and performer.

With poets Dawn Lundy Martin and Duriel E. Harris, Wilson cofounded the performance-based Black Took Collective. Wilson is currently an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and splits his time between Santa Cruz and Long Island, New York.

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Jos Charles is author of the poetry collections a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022), feeld, a Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series selected by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions, 2018), and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). She is visiting faculty for UC RIverside’s Creative Writing Department and teaches as a part of Randolph College's low-residency MFA program. She resides in Long Beach, CA.

All readings take place on campus, followed by reception. Livestream available on CalArts' Creative Writing YouTube.

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