Creative Writing

J. Michael Martinez

Poet and Assistant Professor of Poetry at San Jose State
J. Michael Martinez gave a Visiting Writer Reading/Conversation at the Arts Research Center on September 28, 2023.

J. Michael Martinez was born and raised in Greeley, Colorado. He is a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado and received an MFA from George Mason University. In 2009, Martinez’s collection Heredities was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award and was published by Louisiana State...

Randall Mann

Poet, Critic, and Professor of Writing at Bennington College
Randall Mann gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in November 2021, part of the Fall 2021 Flash Reading Series.

A queer poet, critic, and medical writer, Randall Mann is the author of five poetry collections: Complaint in the Garden, Breakfast with Thom Gunn, Straight Razor, Proprietary, and A Better Life. He is also the author of a book of criticism, essays, and interviews, The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry. His writing has appeared in TheAdroit...

Adam Mansbach

Author and Former Visiting Professor of Literature at Rutgers University-Camde
Adam Mansbach gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Adam Mansbach is a novelist, screenwriter, cultural critic and humorist. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the Fuck to Sleep, which has been translated into forty languages, named Time Magazine's 2011 "Thing of the Year," and sold over three million copies worldwide. The two sequels, You Have to Fucking Eat and Fuck, Now There Are Two of You are also New York Times...

Ajuan Mance

Visual Artist, Author, Editor, and a Professor of Ethnic Studies and English at Mills College
Ajuan Mance gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 24, 2020.

Ajuan Mance is a Professor of African American literature at Mills College in Oakland, California. A lifelong artist and writer, Ajuan has participated in solo and group exhibitions as well as comic and zine fests, from the Bay Area to Brooklyn. In her art, illustration, and comics, Ajuan uses humor and bright colors to explore race, gender, power, and the people and places in which they intersect. Her work has appeared in a number of digital and print media outlets,...

D. Kealiʻi MacKenzie

Poet
D. Kealiʻi MacKenzie was a Poetry & the Senses Fellow in 2023.

D. Kealiʻi MacKenzie is a queer, Native Hawaiian poet. He is the author of The Mana of Salt (Backbone Press, 2023), winner of the 2023 Backbone Press Chapbook Contest, and From Hunger to Prayer (Silverneedle Press, 2018). He lives in Kailua, on the island of Oahu in Hawai‘i.

tanea lunsford lynx

Writer and Professor of Social Justice and Ethnic Studies at City College of San Francisco
tanea lunsford lynx gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

tanea lunsford lynx (pronouns flexible) is a writer, abolitionist, and fourth generation Black San Franciscan on both sides.

tanea is a proud alum of Voices of Our Nation (VONA) and the Lambda Literary Retreat. In 2023 tanea grew her showings of multidisciplinary work to include her first solo exhibition (we were here) at the San Francisco Main Library and an interactive exhibit (I Used to Live Here) as a part...

Alan Pelaez Lopez

Poet, Installation, and Adornment Artist
Alan Pelaez Lopez gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Alan Pelaez Lopez, Ph.D., was born in Mexico and constantly migrated between the state of Mexico, Mexico City, and Oaxaca’s Costa Chica. At five, Pelaez Lopez migrated alone to the United States, undocumented. As a minor, Pelaez Lopez began to make jewelry as a source of income, which is where they found their passion for art.

In 2010, Pelaez Lopez became artistically, socially, and politically involved in the...

Lili Loofbourow

Staff writer at Slate
Lili Loofbourow gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on September 29, 2016.

Lili Loofbourow is a staff writer at Slate. Before that, The Week. An essay of hers was in Best American Essays 2019, and she won the Virginia Quarterly Review’s Staige D. Blackford Prize for Creative Nonfiction for ...

Muriel Leung

Author and Faculty in the School of Critical Studies at CalArts
Muriel Leung gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Muriel Leung is the author of the forthcoming novel-in-stories How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnamable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company) and several collections that include Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), ...

Raina J. León

Poet, Writer, and Former Professor of Education at Saint Mary’s College of California
Raina J. León gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the...