Robin Coste Lewis is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus (2015), which won the National Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Transition, and VIDA.

Lewis earned her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing Program where she was a Goldwater fellow in poetry. She also earned a MTS degree in Sanskrit and comparative religious literature from Harvard Divinity School. She is a Cave Canem fellow and was awarded a Provost’s fellowship in the Creative Writing & Literature PhD Program at USC. Other fellowships and awards include the Caldera Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Can Serrat International Art Centre in Barcelona, and the Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya. She was a finalist for the International War Poetry Prize, the National Rita Dove Prize, and semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize and the Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Prize.

Lewis has taught at Wheaton College, Hunter College, Hampshire College and the NYU Low-Residency MFA in Paris. Born in Compton, California, her family is from New Orleans.

About Living Writers, Spring 2018: “A Knotted Atlas: Writers on Entanglement”

Spring quarter 2018 will feature eight contemporary writers who explore the knotted spaces and generative possibilities of entangled lives. Their works illuminate the historical enmeshment of cruel futures and hidden histories, persons and things, race and freedom, kinship and loss, and the human and non-human natural world.

This event is co-sponsored by the Porter College George Hitchcock Poetry Endowment, American Indian Resource Center, El Centro, Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, Laurie Sain Creative Writing Endowment, the Chicano Latino Research Center, Cowell College, Bay Tree Bookstore, the Siegfried B. and Elisabeth M. Puknat Literary Series Endowment, the Literature Department, and the Creative Writing Program.

RELATED EVENTS

Tuesday, May 29th
“Opera Works: Journey in Creation”
Workshop rehearsals with Opera Parallele for a new opera based on the life of Georgia O’Keeffe.
2 pm – 5 pm Opera Workshop

The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation Presidential Chair for Feminist Studies, and the Humanities Institute, invite students, faculty, staff and community to witness the creation of an opera based on the life of Georgia O’Keeffe, called “Today it Rains”. Opera Parallele, San Francisco based company, under the direction of Maestra Nicole Paiement (Emerita, UCSC Music Department), commissioned this opera by award-winning composer Laura Kaminsky. Performers, the librettists, the composer, and the director will be in residence and will workshop and rehearse this opera in the making. Workshops are free and open to everyone.

Tuesday, May 29th

Panel “Always Moving Up Hill: Women in the Arts”  – Registration Required

Featuring:

Robin Coste Lewis, Poet, National Book Award Winner for Voyage of the Sable Venus
Nicole Paiement, Conductor, Musical Director, Opera Parallele
Laura Kaminsky, Opera Composer
Jennifer Gonzalez, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture, UCSC
Bettina Aptheker, Professor of Feminist Studies, UCSC (moderator)

Doors open at 6:30pm – Light refreshments will be available for purchase at the Kuumbwa kitchen

Event starts at 7:00pm

Wed, May 30th
Cultural Studies talk with Robin Coste Lewis – Humanities 1, Room 210 @ 12:15pm
Robin Coste Lewis reading and book signing – Bookshop Santa Cruz @ 7pm

Thurs, May 31st
Living Writers with Robin Coste Lewis – Humanities Lecture Hall @ 5:20pm

These events are co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute, The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation Presidential Chair for Feminist Studies, Arts Division, Porter College, Living Writers & Cultural Studies.