Flash Reader

Brittany Perham

Author and Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University
Brittany Perham gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Brittany Perham's most recent book, Double Portrait (W.W. Norton, 2017), was selected by Claudia Rankine for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She is also the author of The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions, 2012); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP, 2016). Her...

Katie Peterson

Poet and Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at UC Davis
Katie Peterson gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Katie Peterson is the author of Fog and Smoke, published by FSG in early 2024. Poems from the collection have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and the Yale Review, among other publications. Her previous book, Life in a Field (2021) is a collaboration with the photographer Young Suh. She is the author of other books of poetry: This One Tree...

D.A. Powell

Poet and Professor at the University of San Francisco
D. A. Powell gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Born in Albany, Georgia, D. A. Powell earned an MA at Sonoma State University and an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first three collections of poetry, Tea, (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004), are considered by some to be a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Lunch was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Cocktails...

Barbara Jane Reyes

Poet, Author, Co-Editor of Doveglion Press, and Adjunct Professor at USF’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program
Barbara Jane Reyes gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in May 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, the Philippines, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. She earned a BA in ethnic studies from the University of California at Berkeley and an MFA from San Francisco State University. She is the author of the poetry collections Letters to a Young Brown Girl (2020), Invocation to Daughters (2017), Diwata (2010), Poeta en San Francisco (2005), winner of the James...

Atsuro Riley

Poet
Atsuro Riley gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in November 2021, part of the Fall 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Atsuro Riley is the author of the poetry collections Heard-Hoard (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010). In 2023 Riley was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and winner of the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Heard-Hoard was the winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and a...

Tony Robles

Poet, Historian, and Social Justice Activist
Tony Robles gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Tony Robles, “The People’s Poet” was born in San Francisco and is the nephew of Filipino-American poet, historian and social justice activist Al Robles. He was a shortlist nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco in 2017 and the recipient of the San Francisco Art Commission individual literary artist grant in 2018. His two books of poetry and short stories, Cool Don’t Live Here No More - A letter to San Francisco ...

Kim Shuck

Poet, Author, Weaver, and Bead Worker
Kim Shuck gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Kim Shuck embraces the fool and jester qualities of being a modern poet and artist. She is a devotee of San Francisco, whose hills she wanders nearly always on foot. Her maternal grandparents met at the Polish Hall on Shotwell and she spent many hours with her mother and grandmother wandering the Mission St. Miracle Mile, taking books out of the Mission Branch library and watching aquarium fish on the ground floor of what used to be Hale's. She...

Kevin Simmonds

Musician and Writer
Kevin Simmonds gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in October 2021, part of the Fall 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Kevin Simmonds is a musician and writer originally from New Orleans. He studied music at Vanderbilt University, Middle Tennessee State University and completed the Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina. He founded Tono International Arts Association, an international arts presenter in northern Japan (Iwate Prefecture).

Kevin received a Fulbright fellowship to Singapore where he started the first-ever poetry workshop in Changi...

Darius Simpson

Writer, Educator, and Performer
Darius Simpso gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. He received an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from Mills College. Darius was a recipient of the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is the author of Never Catch Me (Button Poetry, 2022).​ He...

Maya Sisneros

Writer and Undergraduate Advisor in the UC Berkeley School of Education
Maya Sisneros gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Maya Sisnerosis a Bay Area-based writer whose poetry and fiction explore identity, intimacy, and lines of f/light. She is a recipient of the inaugural 2021 SFF/Nomadic Press Lit Award and AWP's 2021 Kurt Brown Prize for Fiction. She attended a Tin House Summer Workshop in 2021. Maya is currently at work on a novella of speculative fiction.