Terri Witek in conversation with Rachel Nelson

Conversations: Power Forged, the Fall Living Writers theme, features poets, novelists, academics, curators, and artists in conversation with one another, in person, across genre and media to open up a space between them, and all of us, within dialogue, collaboration, politics, intimacy and difference which poet and activist Audre Lorde describes as that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged. Between legacies, institutions, families, embodiments and homes; across race, gender, sexuality, and class, guests will explore just how. The Fall 2022 series is co-sponsored by the Center for Racial Justice.

Terri Witek is the author of 7 books of poems, most recently The Rattle Egg (2021); Something’s Missing in This Museum is forthcoming in 2023. Recent work has been featured in two international anthologies: JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (2021), and in the WAAVe Global Anthology of Women’s Asemic Writing and Visual Poetry (2021). She has collaborated with Brazilian artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) since 2005–their works together include museum and gallery shows, performance and site-specific projects featured internationally in New York, Seoul, Miami, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, and Valencia. Witek holds the Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing at Stetson University, and with Lopes teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson’s low-residency MFA of the Americas. Their collaborative projects are represented by The Liminal, Valencia Spain. terriwitek.com

Rachel Nelson, PhD, is director and chief curator of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and adjunct professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture at University of California, Santa Cruz. In her curatorial projects and research, Nelson explores the transformative potential of art and culture. She is co-curator of the group exhibition Barring Freedom (2020-21), which looks at how artists engage the racialized histories and presents of the U.S. criminal legal system. Other curatorial projects include Bodies at the Borders with Carlos Motta, Solitary Garden with jackie sumell and Tim Young, and Visualizing Abolition, an ongoing art and education program. Nelson has also has published widely, including in Journal of Curatorial Studies, Brooklyn Rail, NKA, Third Text, Savvy, and African Arts, among others.