Creative Writing

Marina Romani

ARC Fellow, Multimedia Writer and Artist, Translator, and Professor at UC Berkeley
Marina Romani was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2012 – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

Marina Romani (she/they) is a multimedia writer and artist, editor, translator, educator, and performer of Western classical music and Afro-Caribbean music. She holds a PhD in Italian Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Film Studies from UC Berkeley. She is a lecturer in the Sociology Department at UC Berkeley, teaching upper-division courses in sociology of culture and cross-cultural communications.

Marina taught courses on language, cinema, literature,...

Pedro J. Rolón

Ph.D. Candidate in the Comparative Literature Department at UC Berkeley
Pedro J. Rolón was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Art as Critique Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 1, 2019.

Pedro J. Rolón (B.A. in Literature, Yale University, 2014) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Literature department and the program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley. He is interested in post-colonial theory, the history of the senses, poetics, and the relationship between aesthetic experiences and the epistemological fields opened up by poetic, visual and auditory experiments. Recently, he has been reading poetry and other...

Tony Robles

Poet, Historian, and Social Justice Activist
Tony Robles gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Tony Robles, “The People’s Poet” was born in San Francisco and is the nephew of Filipino-American poet, historian and social justice activist Al Robles. He was a shortlist nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco in 2017 and the recipient of the San Francisco Art Commission individual literary artist grant in 2018. His two books of poetry and short stories, Cool Don’t Live Here No More - A letter to San Francisco ...

Jared Robinson

ARC Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate at UC Berkeley in English
Jared Robinson was an ARC Fellow in Fall & Spring 2020 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – he was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

Jared Robinson is a poet and critic from Indianapolis, Indiana. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley in the department of English, where his work has been supported by the Arts Research Center and the Black Studies Collaboratory. He writes and thinks about autobiography, his own and those penned by others, across multiple mediums. He is currently at work on a dissertation...

Atsuro Riley

Poet
Atsuro Riley gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in November 2021, part of the Fall 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Atsuro Riley is the author of the poetry collections Heard-Hoard (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010). In 2023 Riley was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and winner of the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Heard-Hoard was the winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America and a...

Barbara Jane Reyes

Poet, Author, Co-Editor of Doveglion Press, and Adjunct Professor at USF’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program
Barbara Jane Reyes gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in May 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, the Philippines, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. She earned a BA in ethnic studies from the University of California at Berkeley and an MFA from San Francisco State University. She is the author of the poetry collections Letters to a Young Brown Girl (2020), Invocation to Daughters (2017), Diwata (2010), Poeta en San Francisco (2005), winner of the James...

Noʻu Revilla

ARC Fellow, Poet, and Educator
Noʻu Revilla was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2023 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative, in collaboration with University of Hawaiʻi – she was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

Noʻu Revilla (she/her/ʻo ia) is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Born and raised on the island of Maui, she prioritizes aloha, gratitude, and collaboration in her practice. Her debut book ASK THE BRINDLED (Milkweed Editions 2022) won the 2021 National Poetry Series and 2023 Balcones Prize. She also won the 2021 Omnidawn Broadside Poetry prize with her poem “iwi hilo means thigh bone means...

Ishmael Reed

Poet, Novelist, Essayist, Songwriter, Composer, Playwright, Editor, and Publisher
Ishmael Reed gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center on March 15, 2017.

One of America’s most significant literary figures, Ishmael Reed has published over 30 books of poetry, prose, essays, and plays, as well as penned hundreds of lyrics for musicians ranging from Taj Mahal to Macy Gray. His work is known for its satirical, ironic take on race and literary tradition, as well as its innovative, post-modern technique. Critic Robert Elliot Fox described Reed’s work: “In his writing, Reed is a great improviser, a master of collage with an amazing ability to...

Ted Purves

Artist, Writer, and Founder of the Social Practice Program at CCA
Ted Purves was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the Questioning Aesthetics Symposium at the Arts Research Center on March 13, 2015.

Ted Purves was an independent artist, editor, and curator. His work has been exhibited and published in many venues and journals throughout California, as well as in New York, Boston, Albany and several cities in Germany. Purves has won funding from the Creative Work Fund in San Francisco and the Headlands Center for the Arts and been an artist-in-residence at The Djerassi Colony and the Drawing Residency Program. He taught at the...

D.A. Powell

Poet and Professor at the University of San Francisco
D. A. Powell gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Born in Albany, Georgia, D. A. Powell earned an MA at Sonoma State University and an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first three collections of poetry, Tea, (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004), are considered by some to be a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Lunch was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Cocktails...