The Spring 2015 Living Writers Series is focused on flexible forms and mixed media. You can expect writers and artists working in and across a number of forms, and through a variety of media to include poetry, fiction, film, graphic art, dance, and music. Each of the writers and artists featured in this series combines multiple genres and materials, whether textual, sonic, visual, and/or embodied to explore intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and class in their written, screened, and staged performances.

The Living Writers Series is a free and public event held Thursdays, 6:00-7:45 pm in Humanities Lecture Hall 206. For more information, please email rvwilson@ucsc.edu

Terri Witek

is the author of Exit Island, The Shipwreck Dress (both Florida Book Award medalists) , Carnal World , Fools and Crows, Courting Couples(Winner of the 2000 Center for Book Arts Contest), First Shot at Fort Sumter/ Possum (a poetry/comics chapzine) and Robert Lowell and LIFE STUDIES:Revising the Self . A new chapbook, On Gavdos Ferry, and a new book of poems, Body Swap are forthcoming.

Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Slate, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Hudson Review, and many other journals and anthologies, including Best of Poetry Daily 2007 and Old Flames–10 years of 32 Poems (2013). She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, The Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, The Blue Flower Arts/ Atlantic Center for the Arts, Sewanee, and the state of Florida. A professor of English at Stetson University, where she directs the creative writing program, her summer faculty positions have included the Prague Summer Literary Program, the West Chester Poetry Conference, Poetry by the Sea, and the DisQuiet International program in Lisbon, where she and Cyriaco Lopes run “The Fernando Pessoa Game.” They will be core faculty in Poetry in an Expanded Field in Stetson University’s new low-residency MFA program. She can be found online at: http://terriwitek.com

Jai Arun Ravine

They are a writer, dancer and graphic designer. They are the author of แล้ว AND THEN ENTWINE: LESSON PLANS, POEMS, KNOTS; IS THIS JANUARY; THE SPIDERBOI FILES; and the director of the short film TOM/TRANS/THAI, which has screened in Bangkok, Berlin, Los Angeles and San Francisco, among others. They hold an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. Creative and critical writing appears most recently in Transgender Studies Quarterly, Tarpaulin Sky Literary Journal, Eleven Eleven, EOAGH and TENDE RLOIN. A recipient of fellowships from ComPeung, Djerassi and Kundiman, they are a former Staff Writer for Lantern Review. They can be found online at: http://jaiarunravine.com/

Spring 2015 Living Writer Series:
April 16: Janice Lee
April 23: Terri Witek, Jai Arun Ravine
April 30: Marilyn Chin
May 7: Jared Harvey, Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez, Whitney De Vos, Nicholas James Whittington, Eric Sneathen
May 14: Dawn Lundy Martin
May 21: Eleni Sikelianos, Josef Sikelianos
May 28: Sarah Manguso, Maggie Nelson
June 4: Student Reading
June 11: Senior Projects Reading