Visiting Writer

Ross Gay

Poet, Essayist
Ross Gay gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 17, 2021.

Ross Gay is interested in joy.

Ross Gay wants to understand joy.

Ross Gay is curious about joy.

Ross Gay studies joy.

Something like that.

~

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley...

Aracelis Girmay

Poet, Professor of English at Stanford University
Aracelis Girmay gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on September 28, 2023.

Born and raised in Santa Ana, California, poet Aracelis Girmay earned a BA at Connecticut College and an MFA from New York University. Her poems trace the connections of transformation and loss across cities and bodies.

In her 2011 online chat interview with the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, Girmay discussed innovative and hybrid poetric forms, stating, “I wonder what new explorations of form might have to do with documenting the new...

Joy Harjo

Performer, Writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate
Joy Harjo gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center on April 22, 2020.

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She earned her BA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Harjo draws on First Nation storytelling and histories, as well as feminist and social justice poetic traditions, and frequently incorporates indigenous myths, symbols, and values into her writing. Her poetry inhabits landscapes—the Southwest, Southeast, but also Alaska and Hawaii—and centers around the...

Terrance Hayes

MacArthur Fellow, Poet, and Educator
Terrance Hayes gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center on March 17, 2021.

Terrance Hayes is a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1971, and educated at Coker College where he studied painting and English and was an Academic All-American on the men’s basketball team. After receiving his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997, he taught in southern Japan, Columbus, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Hayes taught at Carnegie...

Lyn Hejinian

Spring 2011 ARC Fellow, Essayist, Translator, and Publisher
Lyn Hejinian was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2011 – she was chosen in the Faculty category.

Poet, essayist, translator, and publisher Lyn Hejinian was a founding figure of the Language poetry movement of the 1970s and an influential force in the world of experimental and avant-garde poetics. Her poetry is characterized by an unusual lyricism and descriptive engagement with the everyday. She authored many poetry collections, including ...

Lee Herrick

California Poet Laureate
Lee Herrick gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center on April 20, 2023.

Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire.

He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020). His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us:...

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

2019 ARC Fellow
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2019 – she was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (Olomidara Yaya) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, writer, performer and healer. Her practice fluctuates between collaborations and participatory projects with alternative gallery spaces within various communities to projects that are intimate and based upon her private experiences in relationship to historical events and contexts. Her practice serves as a bridge, merging the intersections of art, activism, spirituality and healing as tools for...

Jack Hirschman

Poet, Social Activist, Former Poet Laureate of San Francisco, and Founder of the San Francisco International Poetry Festival
Jack Hirschman gave a Visiting Writer Reading and Talk at the Arts Research Center on February 8, 2017.

Jack Hirschman was born in New York, New York. A proponent of the Beat Generation, he earned degrees from the City College of New York (CCNY) and Indiana University.

A poet and translator, Hirschman is the author of numerous books of poetry including, All That’s Left (City Lights Books, 2008) and The Arcanes (Multimedia, 2006). The former poet laureate of San Francisco and founder of the San Francisco International Poetry Festival, Hirschman...

Claire Hong

Visiting Writer
Claire Hong gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 2, 2023.

Claire Hong is the author of Upend (Noemi Press), which was longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award. She received a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry from Stanford University (2019-2021) and has creative writing degrees from the University of Arizona (MFA) and Pratt Institute (BFA). She was born in San Francisco, CA and currently lives in Tucson, AZ where she works to distribute traditional, arid adapted seeds.

Hua Hsu

Staff writer at The New Yorker and Professor of English at Bard College
Hua Hsu gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on October 17, 2016.

Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (2016) and the memoir Stay True (September 2022). He is currently working on an essay collection titled Impostor Syndrome. Hsu is a contributor to CBS News’s Sunday Morning; serves on the governance board of Critical...