Creative Writing

Cianga

ARC Fellow and Artist
Cianga was an ARC Fellow in Spring & Fall 2020 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – they were chosen in the Undergraduate Fellow category.

Cianga (cha-nga) is a Congolese artist based in California, by way of South Africa. A recipient of the Cave Canem + EcoTheo’s Starshine & Clay Fellowship, Cianga creates interdisciplinary work that seeks to decolonize and disrupt language. They are currently an MFA candidate and have received residency and fellowship support from UC Berkeley’s Arts & Research Center, Brooklyn Poets, and Atlantic...

Jenna Wortham

Journalist
Jenna Wortham gave a Visiting Lecturer Talk at the Arts Research Center on February 27, 2017.

Jenna Wortham (they/them), also known as J Wortham, is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation.

J is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and co-host of the...

Nellie Wong

Poet, Socialist Feminist Activist
Nellie Wong gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Nellie Wong was born in Oakland, California, on September 12, 1934. As a teenager she worked in her parents’ Chinese restaurant, and after graduating high school, she took a job as a secretary for Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where she worked until 1982. In her mid-thirties, she began studying creative writing at San Francisco State University.

Wong published her first book of poetry, Dreams in...

Maw Shein Win

2021 ARC Fellow – Poetry & the Senses
Maw Shein Win was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2021 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – she was chosen in the Community Fellow category.

Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 –...

Simone White

Poet, Professor
Simone White gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center on March 17, 2021.

Simone White is the author of or, on being the other woman (Duke University Press, 2022), Dear Angel of Death (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018), Of Being Dispersed (Futurepoem, 2016), and House Envy of All the World (Factory School, 2010), the poetry chapbook, Unrest (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), and the collaborative poem/painting chapbook, Dolly (with...

Mac Wellman

Playwright, Author, Poet
Mac Wellman was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the Revisions in Time Conference at the Arts Research Center on November 16, 2015.

Mac Wellman’s recent work includes: The Offending Gesture, directed by Meghan Finn at the Connelly Theater in 2016; Horrocks (and Toutatis Too) Woo World Wu at Emerson College in Boston in 2013 (with Erin Mallon & Tim Sirgusa); Muazzez at the Chocolate Factory (PS122’s COIL Festival) with Steve Mellor, in 2014; 3 2’s; or AFAR at Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at...

Michael Wasson

Poet
Michael Wasson gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 8, 2023.

Michael Wasson is Nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Lenore, Idaho. His poetry collection This American Ghost (YesYes Books) was winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize. He was a 2019 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow and a 2018 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellow in Literature. His book Swallowed Light is forthcoming in spring 2022 from Copper Canyon Press. He currently lives in...

Ocean Vuong

Writer, Professor, Photographer
Ocean Vuong gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on April 5, 2024.

Writer, professor, and photographer, Ocean Vuong is the author ofOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, winner ofthe American Book Award, The Mark Twain Award, and The New England Book Award. The novel debuted for six weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has since sold more than a million copies in 40 languages. A nominee for the National Book...

Natalia Vigil

Writer, Arts Administrator
Natalia Vigil gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Natalia Vigil is a queer Xicana writer with native heritage, multimedia curator, and big sister of six, born and raised in San Francisco. She is the co-founder of Still Here San Francisco for which she was honored as a Local Hero by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. She is an arts administrator passionate about community-driven creativity and cultural preservation through artist sustainability.

Currently, Natalia...

Cecelia Vicuña

Poet, Artist, Activist, Filmmaker
Cecilia Vicuña gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 15, 2013.

Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, artist, activist and filmmaker whose work addresses pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s, after the military coup against the president Salvador Allende. In London, she was a co-founder of Artists for Democracy in l974.

She coined the term “Arte Precario” in the mid-1960s in Chile, as a new...