Creative Writing

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...

Victor Vich

Writer, Academic
Victor Vich gave a Visiting Scholar Talk at the Arts Research Center on October 9, 2014.

Widely esteemed as one of the most insightful and original writers and academics in Peru today, Victor Vich is an Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP). His interdisciplinary approach to understanding Peru's complex literary, cultural, and political histories and current landscape has resulted in a number of groundbreaking studies, and he was instrumental in establishing...

V. Vale

Cultural Historian, Writer, Keyboard Player
V. Vale gave a Visiting Lecture Talk at the Arts Research Center on April 19, 2017.

V. Vale is a San Francisco cultural historian, writer, keyboard player and, as Vale Hamanaka, was a member of the initial configuration of Blue Cheer. In 1977 V. Vale founded as sole proprietor Search & Destroy, San Francisco’s first Punk Rock publication. In 1980, V. Vale launched as sole proprietor RE/SEARCH. V. Vale is most likely the longest lasting (and still active) Punk publisher. Although Vale released books that include Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch, and many other...

Kellen Trenal

ARC Fellow, Visual Artist, Performer, and Small Business Owner
Kellen Trenal was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2023 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative, in collaboration with luk’upsíimey – they were chosen in the Community Fellow category.

Kellen Trenal (pronounced like “Chanel”) is a visual artist, performer, small business owner, alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, and holistic wellness enthusiast, born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Proudly representing both African (Black American) and niimíipuu (Nez Perce) ancestry, Kellen embraces these multiple identities to empower their work in all its manifestations....

Tourmaline

Artist, Filmmaker, Activist, Editor, and Writer
Tourmaline gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 5, 2020.

Tourmaline is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist whose practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Her films and photographs rewrite mainstream narratives and cultural histories to initiate a paradigm shift and imagine a more pleasure-filled future. Tourmaline’s practice invites us to fundamentally reshape our beliefs about what is possible.

Tourmaline lives and works in...

Sarah Thornton

Writer, Ethnographer, and Sociologist of Culture
Sarah Thornton was a Visiting Writer Panel Participant at the Art of Cultural Criticism Lecture Series at the Arts Research Center on November 10, 2016.

Sarah Thornton is a sociologist who writes about art, design and people. She is the author of four critically acclaimed books. A Canadian who went to the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship, Thornton was once hailed as “Britain’s hippest academic.” Now based in San Francisco, Thornton is better known as “the Jane Goodall of the art world.”

Thornton’s latest book Tits Up explores the universal truths of mammary...

D’mani Thomas

ARC Fellow, Visual Theorist, and Writer
D'mani Thomas was an ARC Fellow in Fall 2021 & Spring 2022 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – he was chosen in the Community Fellow category.

D’mani Thomas is a Black visual theorist, horror enthusiast, and writer from Oakland, California (Ohlone territory). D’mani has received fellowships from The Watering Hole, Foglifter literary journal, and Bakanal de Afrique via Afro Urban Society. When he’s not writing, find him watching horror movie trailers, drinking smoothies, or reading YouTube spoilers for movies he has no attention span for. D’mani’s work has...

Alice Te Punga Somerville

Poet, Irredentist, and Department Head & Professor at the University of British Columbia
Alice Te Punga Somerville gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 8, 2023.

Alice Te Punga Somerville is a scholar, poet and irredentist who writes and teaches at the intersections of literary studies, Indigenous studies and Pacific studies.

Since 2022, she has been a full professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English language & literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Before arriving on Musqueam territory, Te Punga Somerville previously taught at universities in Australia, Hawai’i...

Estelle Tarica

Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at UC Berkeley
Estelle Tarica was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant / Moderator at the Memory Paths and Fragments from the Past Talk at the Arts Research Center on March 6, 2024.

Estelle Tarica (PhD Comparative Literature, Cornell, 2000) is Professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and a former Chair of the Latin American Studies Program at UC Berkeley. She is the author of The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), concerning the discourse of indigenismo and mestizaje in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia...

Joel Tan

Playwright and Dramatist
Joel Tan was a Visiting Writer Panel Participant at the Impact in the Arts Think Tank Conference at the Arts Research Center on January 17, 2014. Joel Tan is a Singaporean playwright based in London and Singapore. Recent work in the UK includes No Particular Order at Theatre503; When The Daffodils at the Orange Tree Theatre; Living Archive at the Royal Court; Ghosts in the Blood for Audible UK; Overheard, and Augmented Chinatown with Chinese Arts Now. He is under commission with the Royal Court, Headlong Theatre, and the...