Events

October 2018
Living Writers: Samiya Bashir
Samiya Bashir is the author of three books of poetry: Field Theories, and Gospel, and Where the Apple Falls. Sometimes she makes poems of dirt. Sometimes zeros and ones. Sometimes variously rendered text. Sometimes light. Her work has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, and experienced. Bashir holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Poet Laureate, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwood Poetry Awards. Bashir lives…
Find out more »November 2018
Living Writers: Duy Doan & Angie Sijun Lou
Duy Doan is a Vietnamese American poet and the author of We Play a Game, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Slate, and TriQuarterly. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he later served as director of the Favorite Poem Project. Doan has taught at Boston University, Lesley University, and the Boston Conservatory. He was born in Dallas, Texas. Angie Sijun…
Find out more »January 2019
Center for Public Philosophy: High School Regional Ethics Bowl
Teams of up to five high school students have the fall semester to develop their thinking on 15 real-world ethical questions (“cases”) put out in early September by the National High School Ethics Bowl organization. In the Winter, each team participates at a regional tournament (“bowl”). The team that is deemed to have displayed the most clarity, depth, and open-mindedness in their thinking go on to represent our region at the National Bowl in the Spring (held at the University…
Find out more »Living Writers: Sina Grace
UCSC alum Sina Grace is the author and illustrator of the autobiographical Self-Obsessed and Not My Bag and the writer of Marvel’s Iceman comic series, featuring the first out gay superhero. More info: https://qz.com/1105347/the-middle-eastern-american-writer-behind-marvels-iceman-the-most-visible-gay-superhero-yet/
Find out more »Living Writers: Ronaldo V. Wilson
UCSC Professor Ronaldo V. Wilson is an award-winning writer, artist and performer and co-founder of the critically lauded performance group Black Took Collective.
Find out more »February 2019
Living Writers: Steven Church
Steven Church is the author of six books of nonfiction, most recently I'm Just Getting to the Disturbing Part: On Work, Fear, and Fatherhood, and he edited the essay anthology, The Spirit of Disruption: Selections from The Normal School. He's a Founding Editor and the Nonfiction Editor for The Normal School: a Literary Magazine as well as the Series Editor for The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19. He's the Coordinator of the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
Find out more »March 2019
Living Writers: Juan Felipe Herrera
Born on the migrant roads of Central California, Juan Felipe grew up in the literary centers of the new Latinx Civil Rights Movement - San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. There he was inspired by bilingual and Aztec, Mayan cultural roots, as well as urban, and multi-cultural and spoken word, jazz styles on community performance stages. Also, he has been a founder of various poetry, jazz and afro-cuban percussion fusion ensembles, and street theatre groups. Schools, from UCLA, Stanford…
Find out more »April 2019
Jody Greene: “Radical Learning – The Heart of the UC Santa Cruz Experience”
This event will review the bold and radical educational vision of UC Santa Cruz since its inception, while introducing alumni to the innovative 21st-century approaches we are taking to ensure all students can thrive at UC Santa Cruz and leave with the tools to make change in society. We will emphasize the university's history of active and activist pedagogy; its commitment to an education grounded in social justice; its ahead-of-the-times choice to have no grades and interdisciplinary departments; and its…
Find out more »October 2019
Living Writers: R. Zamora Linmark
R. Zamora Linmark is the author of The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart, his first novel for young adults from Delacorte/Random House. He has also published two novels, Rolling the R’s (Kaya Press) which he’d adapted for the stage, and Leche (Coffee House Press), as well as four poetry collections, most recently, Pop Vérité, all from Hanging Loose Press. He divides his time between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Baguio, Philippines.
Find out more »CANCELLED Living Writers: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of Cenzontle (BOA editions, 2018), chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin Jr. prize and winner of the 2018 Northern California Book Award. Cenzontle maps a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality through surreal and deeply imagistic poems. Castillo’s first chapbook, Dulce (Northwestern University Press, 2018), was chosen by Chris Abani, Ed Roberson, and…
Find out more »November 2019
Living Writers: “After Ursula” with Karen Joy Fowler, Molly Gloss, Nisi Shawl, and Kim Stanley Robinson
After Ursula: Four renowned Sci Fi/Fantasy Writers all mentored by Ursula K Le Guin read from their work. Molly Gloss is the author of several novels including The Jump-Off Creek, The Dazzle of Day, Wild Life, The Hearts of Horses and Falling From Horses, as well as the story collection Unforeseen. She writes both realistic fiction and science fiction, and her novels have received, among other honors, a PEN West Fiction Prize, an Oregon Book Award, two Pacific Northwest Booksellers…
Find out more »Living Writers: Peg Alford Pursell and Sophia Shalmiyev
Peg Alford Pursell is the author of A Girl Goes Into the Forest, (Dzanc Books, July 2019), and of Show Her A Flower, A Bird, A Shadow, the 2017 Indies Book of the Year for Literary Fiction. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Permafrost, Joyland, and the Los Angeles Review. Most recently, her microfiction, flash fiction, and hybrid prose have been nominated for Best Small Microfictions and Pushcart Prizes. She is the founder and director of WTAW Press, a nonprofit publisher of…
Find out more »December 2019
Living Writers: Student Readings
Students will be reading from their own work.
Find out more »January 2020
Living Writers: Jess Arndt
Jess Arndt received her MFA at Bard and was a 2013 Graywolf SLS Fellow and 2010 Fiction Fellow at the New York Foundation of the Arts. She has written for Fence, BOMB, Aufgabe, and the art journal Parkett, among others. She is a co-founder of New Herring Press, and lives in Los Angeles. More information about Jess Arndt is available here
Find out more »February 2020
Living Writers: Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint
Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint was born in Yangon, Myanmar and grew up in Bangkok, Thailand and San José, California. She is the author of the lyric novel The End of Peril, the End of Enmity, the End of Strife, a Haven (Noemi Press, 2018) and the family history project Zat Lun, which won the 2018 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and is forthcoming in early 2021. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, and Kenyon Review Online, among others,…
Find out more »Living Writers: Jennifer Tseng
Poet and fiction writer Jennifer Tseng was born in Indiana and raised in California by a first generation Chinese engineer and a third generation German American microbiologist. Her flash fiction collection, The Passion of Woo & Isolde (Rose Metal Press 2017), was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award; and her novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (Europa Editions 2015), was shortlisted for the PEN American Center's Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction…
Find out more »Living Writers: Gretchen Primack
Gretchen Primack is a poet and educator living in New York's Hudson Valley. She has taught and/or administrated with prison education programs (mostly college) since 2005. She's the author of three poetry collections: Visiting Days (Willow Books), Kind (Post Traumatic Press), and Doris' Red Spaces (Mayapple Press), and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line 2007). She co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown (Penguin Avery 2012).…
Find out more »March 2020
CANCELLED – Living Writers: Konrad Steiner
Please note that this Thursday's Living Writers reader, Konrad Steiner, wanted to respect the graduate student strike and not cross the picket lines. His reading/performance will be rescheduled for next year. Konrad Steiner is a San Francisco based experimental filmmaker. He has been making 16mm films since 1981, and since 2004 has been working with musicians and poets on live cinema. From 2004-2006 he was a curator at SF Cinematheque and from 2007-2009 co-produced the Kino21 film series which specialized…
Find out more »CANCELLED: Writing for Living: A Conference in Honor of Helene Moglen (1936-2018)
With deep sadness, we have to announce that this weekend’s conference in honor of Helene Moglen, Writing for Life, March 13-14, with the first memorial Helene Moglen Lecture in Feminism and the Humanities and many other wonderful talks and events, plus some amazing food, is canceled because of the evil Covid 19 virus. Following CDC advice, UCSC has mandated that all such events must be canceled. We will try to reschedule at a later date. After all, everyone has written…
Find out more »March 2022
Living Writers Series: Sandra Lim
Sandra Lim is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Curious Thing (W.W. Norton, 2021). Her previous books of poetry are The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize selected by Louise Glück, and Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006). Her writing has appeared in a range of literary journals, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, The Baffler, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. Her poems and essays are anthologized in Counterclaims (Dalkey Archive Press, 2020), The Poem’s Country (Pleiades Press, 2018), The Echoing Green (The…
Find out more »May 2022
Living Writers: Senior Projects Reading
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as…
Find out more »Living Writers: Gina Athena Ulysse
LIVING WRITERS UCSC, SPRING 2022 presents: CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS CELEBRANT: SOUND ACTIONS showcases interdisciplinary writers who deeply engage in various sonic forms, whether the libretto and the operatic, sound and visual art, acoustic music and songwriting, or embodied meditations to explore the possibilities in being attentive to sound, as action and celebrant through writing. This hybrid series features an array of writers and artists who work across several modes (text, multi-media, meditation, and performance) exploring what happens between sound and/as verbal language,…
Find out more »