Writers Week

Tuesday, February 14

• Session 1 – Gabriela Jauregui, Angela Peñaredondo, Boris Dralyuk

  Gabriela Jauregui is a Mexican poet, critic, scholar, editor, and publisher, and one of the central feminist and literary voices in contemporary Mexican culture. Winner of the Hillary Gravedyck prize for All Things Lose Thousands of Times (2016), Angela Peñaredondoqueer Filipinx writer and interdisciplinary educator-artist-scholar will read from her most recent release Nature Felt but Never Apprehended (2023). Boris Dralyuk, a prominent translator from Russian and Ukrainian just stepping down as editor in chief of Los Angeles Review of Books, is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (2022).

  Moderator: Carlina Perna

  

  Gabriela Jauregui
  Photo by Martin Escamilla

  Feral
  Tsunami
  Sexto Piso
  Feminist Press, NY

  

  Angela Peñaredondo

  Nature Felt but Never Apprehended 
  All Things Lose Thousands of Times
  Noemi Press
  California State University, San Bernardino

  

  Boris Dralyuk
  Photo by Jennifer Croft

  My Hollywood and Other Poems
  As translator and editor: Maxim Osipov's "Kilometer 101"
  Paul Dry
  NYRB Classics

• Session 2 – Reza Aslan, Jennifer Croft, Courtney Cook

  Religious studies scholar, screenwriter, television host, essayist, and public intellectual Reza Aslan’s latest bestseller is An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville (2022, one of NPR's Books We Love in 2022). An Emmy and Peabody nominated producer, recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award, Aslan is the author of three internationally best-selling books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Jennifer Croft is a writer and translator whose translations include Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob (2018 Man Booker International Prize); Croft’s critically acclaimed memoir is Homesick (2020, William Saroyan International Prize). Courtney Cook (MFA, UCR) is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces (2021), a Book Riot Best Book of the Year, 2022 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Bisexual Nonfiction, and 2022 Heartland Booksellers Award Finalist in Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in outlets such as TIME, The Guardian, The Rumpus, Hobart, Lunch Ticket, and Split Lip Magazine, and has been featured by McLean Hospital and other notable mental health organizations.

  Moderator: Trinity Thompson

  

  Reza Aslan
  Photo by Shayan Ashgarnia

  An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic LIfe and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville
  W. W. Norton
  University of California, Riverside

  

  Jennifer Croft
  Photo by Nathan Jeffers

  Homesick
  Unnamed Press
  University of Tulsa

  

  Courtney Cook
  Photo by Rebecca Bernstein

  The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces
  Tin House

• 5:00 p.m. – LIVE 1128 INTS – Lifetime Achievement Award: Percival Everett
  

  Lifetime Achievement Award: Percival Everett

  Percival Everett Percival Everett is the celebrated author of twenty-three novels and eleven other books, and one of this year’s two UCR Department of Creative Writing/Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) Lifetime Achievement Awards honorees. He has won or been shortlisted for almost every major literary prize, often more than once. Honors include: 2022 Thomas Wolfe Prize, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, Dos Passos Prize, the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, the 2010 Believer Book Award, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, a Creative Capital Award, BS the Academy Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and recent finalist for the Pulitzer and the Booker Prize. Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His latest book is Dr. No (2023).
  
  “Everett has cultivated a reputation for his vast, genre-defying and sometimes gleefully unhinged body of work.” —New York Times
  
  “Percival’s talent is multifaceted, sparked by a satiric brilliance that could place him alongside Wright and Ellison.” —Publisher’s Weekly
  
  “If part of the mission of the artist is to expand the thinking of the culture in which he exists, I have my work cut out for me.” —Percival Everett
  
  “There are two kinds of readers in America: those who are reading Percival Everett, and those who are missing out.” —National Book Critics Circle Judges Citation
  
  Moderator: Quyen Pham

Wednesday, February 15

• Session 1 – Morgan Talty, David Tromblay, Ramona Emerson

  Both Morgan Talty’s debut novel Night of the Living Rez (2022) and Ramona Emerson’s debut novel Shutter Fiction (2022) were longlisted for the National Book Award and appeared on many most anticipated and best books lists for the year. David Tromblay published celebrated books of nonfiction (As You Were) and fiction (Sangre Road) in 2021.

  Moderator: TBA

  

  Morgan Talty

  Night of the Living Rez
  Tin House

  

  David Tromblay
  Photo by Ed Tromblay

  As You Were; Sangre Road; Money the Hard Way; The Essentials
  Amazon Author Page

  

  Ramona Emerson
  Photo by Ungelbah Davila-Shivers

  Shutter
  Soho Press

• Session 2 – LIVE 1128 INTS – Charmaine Craig, Susan Straight, Mike Davis Tribute

  Susan Straight helped found the creative writing department at UCR and has published a dozen books and has won or been shortlisted for numerous prestigious awards, including the National Book Award. Mecca (2022) is her ninth novel and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. UCR professor Charmaine Craig’s My Nemesis (2023) follows her NBA-longlisted Miss Burma (2017). Mike Davis, who passed away in October 2022 was distinguished professor emeritus at UCR and is being honored posthumously with our UCR/LARB Lifetime Achievement Award.

  Moderator: TBA

  

  Charmaine Craig
  Photo by Inta Krukle

  My Nemesis, Grove Atlantic
  University of California, Riverside
  National Book Foundation, Longlist, 2017 National Book Awards

  

  Susan Straight
  Photo by Felisha Carrasco

  In the Country of Women, Catapult
  University of California, Riverside

  

  Mike Davis

Thursday, February 16

• Session 1 – No'u Revilla, Nathaniel Mackey (Stephen Minot Lecture), Abigail Chabitnoy

  Hawaiian poet No'u Revilla's debut collection, Ask The Brindled (2022) was the winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series. Poet, critic, and novelist Nathaniel Mackey has won the National Book Award among many others, and is currently Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University. He is among the most influential writers of our time. Poet Abigail Chabitnoy’s latest is In the Current Where Drowning is Beautiful (2022), following on her prizewinning How to Dress a Fish (2016). 

  Moderator: TBA

  

  No'u Revilla 
  Photo by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada

  Ask The Brindled (Milkweed 2022)

  

  Nathaniel Mackey (Steven Minot Lecture)
  Photo by Paul Schraub

  Double Trio (New Directions, 2021)
  Duke University

  

  Abigail Chabitnoy 

  In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful
  Wesleyan University Press
  University of Massachusetts Amherst

• Session 2 – Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, David Campos, Crystal AC Salas

  Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the founder of Women Who Submit, a Los Angeles nonprofit helping women writers, and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge. David Campos and Crystal AC Salas are both graduates of the UCR MFA program, Salas’s Grief Logic (2022) is a winner of the inaugural Alta California Chapbook Prize, and Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner and Canto Mundo fellow Campos’s American Quasar (with illustrations by Maceo Montoya, recently named editor of Huizache) was published in 2021.

  Moderator: TBA

  

  Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
  Photo by Andre Black

  Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016), Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton 2022)
  Antioch University
  MouthFeel Press
  Sundress Publications
  Women Who Submit

  

  David Campos
  Photo by David Campos

  American Quasar, Furious Dusk
  Fresno City College

  

  Crystal AC Salas
  Photo by Crystal AC Salas

  Grief Logic, Gunpowder Press
  Break Bread Project

• 4:00 p.m. – LIVE 1128 INTS – Tom Lutz and Juan Felipe Herrera

  Tom Lutz, professor at UCR, and Juan Felipe Herrera, professor emeritus at UCR and Poet Laureate of the US Emeritus, are better known for their writing, but both have spent some time working in visual media. Today they talk with Andrew Winer about their photography, Juan Felipe discussing his pictures of places, and Tom his pictures of people.

  Moderator: TBA

  

  Tom Lutz
  Photo by David Walter Banks

  Portraits: Moments of intimacy on the Road; The Kindness of Strangers; Aimlessness
  University of California, Riverside

  

  Juan Felipe Herrera

  University of California, Riverside

   

Friday, February 17

• Session 1 - Ashanti Anderson, Ruben Quesada, Paul Hlava Ceballos

  A panel of three UCR alumni. Black Queer Disabled poet, screenwriter, playwright, and occasional essayist Ashanti Anderson’s (MFA, UCR) Black Under (2021) won the Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition. Poet, writer, editor, organizer Ruben Quesada (BA, MFA, UCR / PhD Texas Tech) is the founder of Mercy Street, a monthly online poetry reading series begun as a response to the CoVid pandemic. His latest work is Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (2022). He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles and for UCLA Extension Writers' Program. Paul Hlava Ceballos (BA UCR / MFA NYU / Bellevue College Echocardiography) is the author of banana [ ] (2022 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry), has been awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship, 4Culture arts grant, Poets House fellowship, and Cave Canem Writing Across Cultures fellowship.

  Moderator: Ebonee O'Bryant

  

  Ashanti Anderson
  Photo by Ashanti Anderson

  Black Under
  Black Lawrence Press
  Ashanti Creates

  

  Ruben Quesada

  Latinx Poetics Essays on the Art of Poetry
  (UNM Press, 2022)
  Antioch University
  Poets.org

  

  Paul Hlava Ceballos
  Photo by Tasha Nicole Uria

  banana [ ]
  University of Pittsburgh Press
  Poetry Foundation

• Session 2 – LIVE 1128 INTS – Allison Hedge Coke, Jan Beatty (D. Charles Whitney Reader), Ayize Jama-Everett

  2022-2023 Mellon Dean's Professor, Distinguished Professor, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is the author of 7 books of poetry, a memoir, and a play. Recent honors include an inaugural California Arts Council Legacy Artist Fellowship (2021−2022) and a Fulbright Scholar Award. Hedge Coke's latest release is Look at This Blue (2022, National Book Award finalist). Our 2023 D. Charles Whitney Reader, Jan Beatty, is the author of American Bastard: A Memoir (2021, Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award), The Body Wars: Poems (2020), Jackknife: New & Selected, Switching/Yard, Red Sugar, Bone Shaker and Mad River, and other books. Beatty Hosted the NPR-affiliated WYEP-FM public radio show Prosody. She taught creative writing for 25 years and is the managing editor of MadBooks. Her awards include a Milt Kessler Book Award, State Street Chapbook prize, Agnus Lynch Starrett Prize, Pablo Neruda Prize, Discovery Nation Prize, New Person Award, Heinz Creative Achievement Award, and was a finalist for a Paterson Prize and a Guy Owen Prize. UCR MFA alumnus Ayize Jama-Everett is the author of six books of fiction. In 2023, his new releases include: Heroes of an Unknown World and Box of Bones: Book Two (a graphic novel illustrated by UCR professor John Jennings, a two-time Eisner Awardee). Jama-Everett also holds masters degrees in Divinity and Clinical Psychology.

  Moderator: Carlina Perna

  

  Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
  Photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz

  Look at This Blue
  Finalist, 2022 National Book Awards
  Coffee House Press
  
  University of California, Riverside

  

  Jan Beatty (D. Charles Whitney Reader)
  Photo by Beth Kukucka

  American Bastard
  Red Hen Press, 2021
  
  The Body Wars
  University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020
  
  Jackknife: New and Selected Poems
  University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017

  

  Ayize Jama-Everett

  Heroes of an Unknown World
  Small Beer Press, 2023
  
  Box of Bones: Book Two
  Rosarium Publishing, 2023