Sunday, May 7, 2006

Words in motion: 
Readings and Performances by Mary Anne Mohanraj and IWL students.

" [Mohanraj's] stories transcend time and place." - Time Out New York

As part of KSW & Intersection for the Arts' 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab (IWL), a collaborative program that thoroughly explores and develops the craft of writing, this event includes readings and performances from a range of literary genres. Featuring poet, essayist, fiction and erotica writer Mary Anne Mohanraj, the evening will also present  developing work by IWL 2006 participants Cleavon Smith, Vanessa Merina, Frederick Loomis, Marisela Orta, Maureen Evans, and Carrie Takahata.

Date: Sunday, May 7, 2006

Time: 2PM

Location: Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia Street, @ 16th street (San Francisco)

Cost: $5 - 15, sliding scale.

About the Artists

Mary Anne Mohanraj is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, specializing in post-colonial literature and creative writing. She is the author of several books, including TORN SHAPES OF DESIRE (a collection), AQUA EROTICA and WET (two erotica anthologies she edited for Random House), KATHRYN IN THE CITY and THE CLASSICS PROFESSOR (two erotic choose-your-own-adventure novels she wrote for Penguin), and A TASTE OF SERENDIB (a Sri Lankan cookbook). Her most recent publications include "A Gentle Man" (HARPUR PALATE), "Wild Roses" (THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW EROTICA, VOL. 3) and "How It Started" (BEST LESBIAN EROTICA 2003). Mohanraj founded and served as editor-in-chief from 1998-2000 for CLEAN SHEETS, one of the foremost online erotica magazines. She has recently received a Neff fellowship in English, a Steffenson-Canon fellowship in the Humanities, and the Scowcroft Prize for Fiction. She lives in Chicago and is currently finishing her dissertation, BODIES IN MOTION, an exploration of sexuality, marriage, and Sri Lankan/American immigrant concerns.

Maureen Evans is a Canadian writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her work explores humanity: from alienation to love, and destruction to creation, she observes the personal as inevitably, globally political. Travel through twenty-four countries, as well as an existential take on anarchism, further inform her work. She holds a BFA with Honours from UBC, where she studied writing and anthropology of cultural resistance.

Vanessa Merina writes short fiction and essays. She is publications manager at the Public Policy Institute of California and is editor of the anthology Every Other Wednesday and the chapbooks Stone of the Fish and The Change Giver. She is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Poet and playwright Marisela Treviño Orta holds an M.F.A. in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her first play, Braided Sorrow, was read at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and this August will be read as part of the Ford Amphitheatre’s Summer Reading Series. In March 2006 Marisela participated in the 8^th Annual Women’s Will 24-Hour Playfest. For the festival her 10-Minute play Watch Out For Falling Sky was written, rehearsed and performed in less than one day. Marisela is the Poet Resident of El Teatro Jornalero!, a theatre company composed of Latino immigrants. Marisela is also an Associate Poetry Editor for the online literary journal Switchback. Her poetry has appeared in BorderSenses, Curbside Review, Double Room, Pomona Valley Review, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics and Traverse.

After a 25-year career in sales and marketing with the companies that became Verizon, Frederick Loomis took voluntarily early retirement in order to obtain a graduate Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Drawing at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, which he received in May, 2004.  He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Boston University and a Diploma in Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He is married and has three children from a previous marriage and two step children.  For the past 35 years, Mr. Loomis has been engaged in a personal, experiential inquiry into the world’s revealed religions. During the past 20 years, Mr. Loomis has developed an artistic portfolio of over 100 pencil drawings and a written manuscript that will eventually become The Third Testament: The Genesis Story of the Coming Race of Human Computers – seven prophetic books and a narrative storyline, published under the name of Edward Mathew Taylor.

The poetry of Cleavon Smith has been featured in the Potomac Review and the radio program, The Sculpted Word.  He has also published stories in The Best Gay Asian Erotic and Nive Lives, Volume 2.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Mills College and currently lives in Oakland and teaches at Vista College in Berkeley.

Carrie Y. Takahata has a B.S.W. in Social Work and an M.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  She's co-founder and co-editor of Hybolics, a Local literary magazine in Hawaii.  She's written for the Honolulu Weekly and seen her poetry published in Asian Pacific American Journal, Bamboo Ridge, Tinfish, Hawaii Review, and Social Process in Hawaii. 

More about the IWL program
KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP & INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS are proud to present an intensive, collaborative literary program featuring six accomplished writers spanning generations, genres, and styles leading writings workshops with a dozen emerging Bay Area writers.  Both Kearny Street Workshop (est. 1972) and Intersection for the Arts (est. 1965) are organizational mainstays of the Bay Area cultural community, and both have long, distinguished histories of developing, supporting, and cultivating writers over the decades.  Kearny Street Workshop was one of the first outlets for the publication of Asian American Pacific literature, and Intersection for the Arts hosts the longest independent reading series in the state of California.  In joining forces and collaborating on the 2006 Intergenerational Writers Lab, we want to provide local emerging writers with the opportunity to challenge, develop, and expand their writing by working with emerging & established writers in a variety of genres; to contribute to the development of new literary forms and language that incorporate multiple forms of creative expression; and to provide the community with an opportunity to engage with new work and new explorations of form and language. 

Intersection for the Arts is San Francisco's oldest alternative art space (est. 1965) and has a long history of presenting new and experimental work in the fields of literature, theater, music and the visual arts, and also in nurturing and supporting the Bay Area's cultural community through service, technical support, and mentorship programs. Intersection provides a place where provocative ideas, diverse art forms, artists, and audiences can intersect one another. Visit Intersection at www.theintersection.org

UPCOMING PUBLIC EVENTS OF THE 2006 INTERGENERATIONAL WRITERS LAB

Wednesday June 28th, 7 PM  Chapbook release and reading at Kearny Street Workshop, featuring participants in the program

Thursday, May 11th

THE HAPA PROJECT

exhibition opening reception and book launch party

for Kip Fulbeck's new book from Chronicle Books, /The Hapa Project

featuring performances from hapa artists

Date: Thursday, May 11th, 2006

Time: 7 - 9.30pm

Location: 180 Capp Street, @17th Street (San Francisco)

Cost: $5 suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.

image courtesy of Kip Fulbeck

Exhibition Details:
The Hapa Project exhibition runs May 11 - June 2, 2006. Gallery hours vary; for gallery hours or to schedule an appointment, please contact KSW at info@kearnystreet.org or call 415.503.0520.

ABOUT KIP FULBECK AND THE HAPA PROJECT
Artist Kip Fulbeck traveled the country photographing over 1000 Hapas from all walks of life – from babies to adults, construction workers to rock stars, gangbangers to pro surfers, schoolteachers to porn stars, engineers to comic book artists. These are gathered together in /The Hapa Project/, the first exhibition and book of its kind to showcase multiracials of partial Asian/Pacific Islander descent.

Avoiding the exoticism often associated with multiraciality, Fulbeck strove to photograph these people as they really are, minus the trappings of everyday life – the clothing and jewelry and makeup. These images are paired with each participant’s handwritten response to the question “What are you?” creating a powerful mosaic of intimacy, beauty, and identity. The individuals here look directly at the camera and the viewer, presenting themselves to the world as a reality that will no longer be ignored. As Fulbeck states, “This is the work I wish was around when I was a kid.”

Kip Fulbeck is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and spoken-word artist whose work has been exhibited worldwide. He is Professor and Chair of Art at UC Santa Barbara.

For more information, please visit http://www.thehapaproject.com