Creative Writing

Zoya Brumberg-Kraus

Scholar, Editor
Dr. Zoya Brumberg-Kraus was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Berkeley/Stanford Symposium at the Arts Research Center on April 7, 2018. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Dr. Zoya Brumberg-Kraus is a scholar-writer and editor located in the Detroit Metro Area. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Art Studio from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023-24, Brumberg-Kraus was a Research...

William Brewer

Novelist, Professor, Former Stegner Fellow
William Brewer gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

William Brewer’s debut novel, The Red Arrow, is out from Knopf. It received the Silver Medal for First Fiction from the California Book Awards. His first book, I Know Your Kind, was a winner of the National Poetry Series. His work has appeared in A Public Space, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Sewanee Review...

Naomi Bragin

Dancer, Artist, Writer, Scholar
Naomi Bragin was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2015 – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Naomi Bragin is a dancer, writer, wanderer, wonderer—collaborating with other artists to heal and recreate worlds.

Black Power of Hip Hop Dance: On Kinethic Politics, her current writing project, tells stories of streetdances created by youth living in California during the 1970s Funk & Disco eras, whose...

reelaviolette botts-ward

Poetry and the Senses Fellow and Postdoctoral Scholar in American Studies at UC Davis
reelaviolette was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2021 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

reelaviolette botts-ward is a homegirl, an educator, and a nontraditional multimedia artist from Philadelphia, PA. She is currently a doctoral candidate in African Diaspora Studies researching Black women’s healing spaces in Oakland. ree centers “everyday round the way Blackgirl methodology” to theorize creative innovation in the wake of displacement....

Iain Boal

Social Historian of Science and Technics
Iain Boal gave a Visiting Lecturer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on Feburary 1, 2017. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Iain Boal is a social historian of science and technics, affiliated with the University of California and Birkbeck College, London. He is associated with Retort, a group of writers, artists and artisans based for two decades in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is particularly interested in the relations between art, science, and representation. He is a founder of the new field of agnotology (a...

Natasha Boas

Contemporary Art Curator, Writer, Critic
Natasha Boas was a Visiting Lecturer who lectured at the Thinking Through the Arts and Design at Berkeley Spring 2017 Lecture Series and Art of Cultural Criticism Fall 2016 Lecture Series. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website. Natasha Boas is a French-American contemporary art curator, writer, and critic. She has taught art history...

Zachary Blinkinsop

ARC Fellow and Graduate Student in Scandinavian Studies at UC Berkeley
Zachary Blinkinsop was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2018 – he was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website. A Third Culture Kid and Air Force brat who grew up in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Zachary Blinkinsop’s academic engagement with literature is tied closely to his interest in national identity...

Kaylan Black

2021 and 2022 Oakland Vice Youth Poet Laureate
Kaylan Black gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Kaylan Black, 2021 and 2022 Oakland Vice Youth Poet Laureate and a member of the National Society of High School Scholars. At the time of her Flash Poetry reading in April 2023, she had been accepted into 3 colleges early as a 17 year-old and Senior at Oakland Charter High School. She has been on the African American Honor Roll and Achievement, Honor...

Sherwin Bitsui

Writer, Poet, and Professor of English at Northern Arizona University
Sherwin Bitsui gave a Visiting Writer Reading and Lecture at the Arts Research Center on September 5, 2024. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Sherwin Bitsui, a Diné (Navajo) from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, received an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program. He is the author of the poetry collections Dissolve (2018), Flood Song (2009), and Shapeshift (2003).

Steeped in Native...

Evan Bissell

ARC Fellow, Artist, Researcher, Facilitator, and Administrator
Evan Bissell was an ARC Fellow in 2015 – he was chosen in the graduate and faculty category. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among...