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Event Details
This weekend conference (March 1-3) responds to the vital need for minority writers to construct spaces for creating, critiquing and publishing their work. Co-hosted with UC San Diego's SPACES and Cross Cultural Center, the conference will offer panels on topics such as writing in diasporic communities, navigating predominantly white MFAs, and finding literary agents and publishers willing to work with #OwnVoices authors. This event is free and open to the public.
- Central Library | Friday, March 1 | 7:00 – 9:00 pm
- Cross Cultural Center | Saturday, March 2 | 9:15 am – 7:00 pm
- Central Library | Sunday, March 3 | 9:30 am – 3:00 pm
See conference schedule and speakers below. Register here. Check us out on Facebook.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE, PANELS, SPEAKERS FRIDAY, MARCH 1 | SAN DIEGO CENTRAL LIBRARY OPEN MIC NIGHT & MUSICAL PERFORMANCE BY Charmaine Clamor Ms. Clamor is a Filipina jazz singer based in Los Angeles, best known for blending traditional Filipino folk songs and instruments with American jazz and blues in a newly developed musical genre called “Jazzipino”. SATURDAY, MARCH 2 | CROSS CULTUYRAL CENTER, UC SAN DIEGO PLENARY SPEAKER: Lee Ann Kim Lee Ann Kim founded the San Diego Asian American Film Festival in 2000. The former KGTV news anchor served as Executive Director of the San Diego Asian Film Foundation and its nonprofit partner, the Pacific Arts Movement until she retired from the nonprofit in 2016. Panel: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN Moderator: Zeinabu Irene Davis Professor Davis is an award-winning director of such films as Compensation (Gordon Parks Directing Award) and Spirits of Rebellion (Best Documentary Feature Film, San Diego Film Awards, 2017) Her vision is passionately focused on the depiction of African American women’s hopes, dreams, past and future. Her interests include altering and diversifying the terrain of mass media, film history, world cinema and folklore. She frequently writes and lectures on African and African American cinema. Panelists: Jennifer Cowan, Thelma Virata de Castro, Troy Espera, Sarika Mehta, Jennifer Pun Jill Cowan writes the California Today newsletter for The New York Times, where she gets to keep tabs on the most important things happening in her home state every day. She's previously worked as a reporter in Orange County, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, the Bay Area and Nashville. Most recently, she covered the economy and demographics for the Dallas Morning News. Thelma Virata de Castro is a Filipino American playwright. She is the founder of San Diego Playwrights and a Teaching Artist and Community Programs Coordinator for Playwrights Project. Her project, The Fire in Me: An Exploration of Domestic Violence in San Diego’s Filipino American Community, won a San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst Grant with Asian Story Theater and a California Humanities grant with Access Inc. For more information and performance dates, visit www.thefireinme2019.com. Troy Espera is the executive producer for News at ABS-CBN International’s The Filipino Channel (TFC) in Daly City, CA. His work has won two Emmy Awards, the National Journalism Award for Broadcast from the Asian American Journalists Association, multiple Telly Awards, and a Vision Award nomination from the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC). In 2018 Troy was selected to participate in the Maynard 200 National Fellowship Program at the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Sarika Mehta hosts and produces the podcast Intersections Radio which also airs locally on KBOO Community Radio and XRAY.FM. She is also one of the producers for the Disability Visibility Project podcast hosted by Alice Wong. Previously, she worked with APA Compass collective and anchored the Evening News on KBOO 90.7 FM. In 2016, she was a New Voices Scholar with the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR). Her work focuses on issues concerning race, disability, and intersectionality. Jennifer Pun is a Canadian film & television producer known for the award-winning tween series How To Be Indie, tween series Connor Undercover, the Canadian Screen Award nominated feature Fall and horror feature The Void. She has consulted for leading production companies including Spin Master, Just For Laughs, Aircraft Pictures and Darius Films. Through her partnership with Edge Entertainment Producer Rosalie Chilelli, Jennifer develops film and television projects with a focus on Canadian and Latin American co-productions. Panel: FRESH OFF THE BOAT VS HOMEGROWN Moderator: Marivi Soliven Marivi’s debut novel The Mango Bride (Penguin, 2013) won the 2011 Carlos Palanca Memorial Award, the Philippine counterpart of the Pulitzer Prize. The novel has been translated into Spanish and Filipino, and a film adaptation is in process. Stories and essays from 16 earlier books have appeared in anthologies in Manila and the United States. When not writing or organizing literary events, she works as a telephonic Tagalog interpreter. Panelists: Huda Al Marashi, Naomi Hirahara, Kat Tanaka Okopnik, Irene Suico Soriano, Huda Al-Marashi is the author of the memoir First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story, set for release in November, 2018. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the LA Times, Al Jazeera, VIDA Review, Refinery 29, the Rumpus, and The Offing. www.hudaalmarashi.com. Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar® Award-winning author of the Mas Arai series and Officer Ellie Rush mysteries. She was a reporter and editor of The Rafu Shimpo at the height of the redress and reparations movement for Japanese Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes during World War II. An active consultant on historic exhibitions and TV programs, she also writes nonfiction books, middle-grade fiction and noir short stories. www.naomihirahara.com. Kat Tanaka Okopnik is a writer and editor, currently hosting public discussions of social justice, geek culture, food, and parenting on her Facebook page. She can also be found at ShadesBetween.com and on most social media platforms as @ktokopnik. Her ongoing major project is the “Dictionary of Social Justice”. Irene Suico Soriano is the author of Primates from an Archipelago (Rabbit Fool Press, 2017) and founded the reading series Wrestling Tigers: Asian Pacific American Writers Speak at the Japanese American National Museum which she curated from 1994-2000. The Los Angeles Times noted her curatorial work in the NEA funded World Beyond Poetry Festival, which featured over 100+ poets from the diverse communities of Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Solidarity Journal, and Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (Rattapallax Press), and others. www.instagram.com/archipelagopoem. Panel: THAT COMPLEX CONFLUENCE OF IDENTITIES: WRITING FROM AND ACROSS MULTIPLE IDENTITY CATEGORIES Moderator: Brandon Som Brandon is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at UC San Diego and author of The Tribute Horse, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the chapbook Babel's Moon, winner of the Snowbound Prize. He was the Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poet-in-Residence at Westminster College, and was awarded fellowships at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and Civitella Ranieri. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and an M.F.A. in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh. Panelists: Jessica Sun Lee, Jenn Soriano, Miranda Tsang JS Lee authored the novels, Keurium (Pent-up Press, 2018), An Ode to the Humans Who’ve Loved and Left Me (2015); and literary non-fiction, It Wasn’t Love (2014). She wrote and illustrated the children’s books, For All the Lives I’ve Loved and Lived (2015), and For All the Friends I’ve Found (2016). Navigating the nuance of race, adoption, identity, and trauma, her work aims to provoke understanding of the oft overlooked. She was adopted to New England from Korea, and currently lives in the Bay Area of California. Jen Soriano is a Filipinx-American writer whose work blurs the boundaries between nonfiction, poetry and speculative fiction. Her lyric essay A Brief History of her Pain was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her essays have appeared in Waxwing, Pleiades, TAYO Literary Magazine and others. She is also the hopeful published-author-to-be of Making the Tongue Dry, an essay chapbook that was a finalist for the 2018 Newfound Prose Prize. Jen holds an MFA in nonfiction and fiction from the Rainier Writing Workship, and lives Seattle, WA with her two favorite boys in the world. Miranda Tsang is a writer multiethnic poet, writer, and educator from San Francisco living in Los Angeles. A graduate of the UC Riverside MFA program, Tsang has received scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, and Kearny Street Workshop. Her writing is published in New Life Quarterly, Lumen, and The Offing. She currently oversees programming at writing center 826LA in Echo Park. Panel: CRAFTING THE UNTOLD TALE Moderator: Namratta Poddar Namrata writes fiction, nonfiction, and serves as Interviews Editor for Kweli where she curates a series titled “Race, Power, and Storytelling.” Her work has appeared in Longreads, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Transition, VIDA Review & elsewhere. Her debut collection of stories Ladies Special, Homebound was a finalist for Feminist Press's 2018 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and is forthcoming from Speaking Tiger. She holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars, and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transnational Cultures from UCLA. www.namratapoddar.com Panelists: Madhushree Gosh, Jason McCall, Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende, Jason M. Perez Madhushree Ghosh is a Senior Editor at Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel. Her work has appeared or was a finalist in The New York Times, Panorama Journal (Pushcart-nominated), Hippocampus, Zoetrope, Unearth Women, Catapult, The Rumpus, Glimmer Train, The Chicago Quarterly Review, DAME, and others. An Oakley Hall scholar, Madhushree works in cancer diagnostics and speaks frequently on"Women in Science" panels worldwide. She’s currently working on a nonfiction book, Hatke, on outlier women. Jason McCall holds an MFA from the University of Miami, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop, and his collections include Two-Face God; Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize); Silver; I Can Explain; and Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize). Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende’s is a Zimbabwean writer whose work has appeared in the anthology Where to Now (AmaBooks, 2011), on Storytime online literary journal, and in the annual short story Anthology, African Roar, and Guernica. Her poetry has been published in the anthology Muse for Women, 2013 and African Drum (Diaspora Publishers, 2013). She was a Hedgebrook Writer in Residence in 2014. Jason Magabo Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016) and This is for the Mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017). Recipient of an NEA Challenge America Grant, Perez has performed at the National Asian American Theatre Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, La Jolla Playhouse and others. Jason holds an M.F.A. in Writing & Consciousness from New College of California and a dual Ph.D. in Communication & Ethnic Studies from UCSD. He is an Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing at CSU San Bernardino. DINNER | 6:00 – 7:00 pm OPEN MIC NIGHT SUNDAY, MARCH 3 | SAN DIEGO CENTRAL LIBRARY Panel: ACTS OF WAR Moderator: Cristina Rivera Garza Cristina is an author, translator, critic and distinguished professor of Hispanic Studies and Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Her publications include: The Iliac Crest, translated by Sarah Booker (The Feminist Press, 2017); The Taiga Syndrome, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine with Aviva Kana (Dorothy Project, 2018); Había mucha neblina o humo o no sé qué (Random House, 2016). She received the Roger Caillois Award for Latin American Literature (Paris, 2013); the Anna Seghers (Berlin, 2005); and is the only author to have twice won the International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, in 2001 for her novels Nadie me verá llorar (No One Will See Me Cry) and in 2009 for La muerte me da. Panelists: Hope Wabuke, Donna Miscolta, Ari Honarvar, Karen Llagas Ari Honarvar is the author of the oracle card set and book, Rumi’s Gift and the founder of Rumi With A View, dedicated to building music and poetry bridges across war-torn borders. Her writing has been featured on Teen Vogue, The Guardian, Vice, Huffington Post and Elephant Journal. She currently facilitates a refugee women’s drum circle in El Cajon, CA, home to the largest population of Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the U.S. Donna Miscolta’s story collection Hola and Goodbye (Carolina Wren Press, 2016) won the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman, an Independent Publishers award for Best Regional Fiction, and an International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Fiction. Other work includes the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced (Signal 8 Press, 2011) and stories and essays most recently in The Fourth River, Cascadia Magazine, Moss, and Seattle Review of Books. Hope Wabuke is the author of the chapbooks The Leaving and Movement No.1: Trains. A contributing editor for The Root, her work has also been published in The Guardian, Guernica, The North American Review, Ms. Magazine online and others. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is a founding board member of the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Karen Llagas is a recipient of a Hedgebrook residency, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize. Meritage Press published her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, in 2010. She has an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, lectures at UC Berkeley and works as a freelance translator. Panel: HOW TO PROSPER AT PUBLISHING Moderator: Claire Light Claire is a Bay Area writer, cofounder of Hyphen Magazine and cultural worker with over two decades of experience in nonprofit administration, focusing on arts in the Asian American community. Her fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Hyphen, Farthing, and The Encyclopedia Project, among others. A short collection of her stories, Slightly Behind and to the Left, was published by Aqueduct Press in 2009. She just completed an urban fantasy novel based on the myth of the Monkey King. www.clairelight.net. Panelists: Neelanjana Banerjee, Kirtana Rex, Stefanie Sanchez von Borstel, Hiram Sims Neelanjana Banerjee teaches writing at the Asian American Studies Department of UCLA and is Managing Editor of Kaya Press. Her writing has appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, World Literature Today, The Literary Review, Teen Vogue, Fiction Writers review and many others. She has had residencies at Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center and received scholarships to attend the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute and the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. Kirtana Rex is editor and publisher of A New Golden Age Press. Stefanie Sanchez Von Borstel co-founder of Full Circle Literary, has more than 20 years of experience in trade book publishing. Prior to agenting, she worked in editorial, publicity and trade marketing at Harcourt and Penguin. The award-winning authors and illustrators she represents include Monica Brown, Carmen Tafolla, Diana López, Celia C. Pérez, René Colato Laínez, John Parra, Rafael López, and Juana Martinez-Neal, and others. A proud Tejana from San Antonio, Stefanie is now based in San Diego. Visit her at www.fullcircleliterary.com or follow @fullcirclelit. Hiram Sims is a poet, publisher, and professor of Creative Writing, teaching at the Los Angeles Film School. He is also the founder of the Urban Poets Society and the Community Literature Initiative, a publishing program for Los Angeles writers who want to publish books here at USC. He has published three collections of poetry, and one amazing textbook. SUNDAY, MARCH 3 | 2:30 PM | END OF CONFERENCE |