Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

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...

Cecilia Palmeiro

Writer, Activist, and Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Latin American Studies and Gender Theory at NYU in Buenos Aires
Cecilia Palmeiro was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Amateurism Across the Arts Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 9, 2018.

Cecilia Palmeiro is one of the founders of the transformative Latin American feminist movement Ni Una Menos, or “Not One Woman Less,” which organizes to end femicide and gender-based violence. The Ni Una Menos collective has been supported by Global Fund for Women since 2017. She is also a writer, literary critic, performer, feminist activist, and queer feminist theorist.

Palmeiro received her MA and PhD from...

Benjamin Piekut

Associate Professor of Music at Cornell University
Benjamin Piekut was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Amateurism Across the Arts Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 9, 2018.

Benjamin Piekut studied music and philosophy at Hampshire College before pursuing his M.A. in composition at Mills College, where he studied with Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros. After a stint in the critical studies/experimental practices program at the University of California, San Diego, he completed his Ph.D. in historical musicology at Columbia University. His first monograph,...

Katie Peterson

Poet and Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program at UC Davis
Katie Peterson gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Katie Peterson is the author of Fog and Smoke, published by FSG in early 2024. Poems from the collection have appeared in the Atlantic, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and the Yale Review, among other publications. Her previous book, Life in a Field (2021) is a collaboration with the photographer Young Suh. She is the author of other books of poetry: This One Tree...

Brittany Perham

Author and Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University
Brittany Perham gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Brittany Perham's most recent book, Double Portrait (W.W. Norton, 2017), was selected by Claudia Rankine for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She is also the author of The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions, 2012); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP, 2016). Her...

Lucie Pereira

Writer and Educator
Lucie Pereira gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Lucie Pereira is a multiracial writer and educator. She is a programs coordinator at the nonprofit 826 Valencia and was a 2020 Interdisciplinary Writers’ Lab fellow with Kearny Street Workshop. Her work can be found in sPARKLE + bLINK and Sidereal Magazine. She lives in San Francisco with her partner and their animal, Kristofferson the cat.

Dave Pell

Writer and Managing Editor of NextDraft
Dave Pell gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on May 1, 2017.

Dave Pell has been writing online for almost as long as the internet has existed. His popular newsletter NextDraft has over 140,000 subscribers. NextDraft covers the day’s ten most fascinating news stories, delivered with a fast and pithy wit.

Dave has been a syndicated writer on NPR, Gizmodo, Forbes, and Huffington Post. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English from U.C. Berkeley, and his master’s in education from Harvard.

Besides being a prolific writer,...

Devi Peacock

Founder and Executive Director of Peacock Rebellion
Devi Peacock gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on October 6, 2020.

Devi Peacock is a South Asian non-binary storyteller, performing artist and community organizer based in Oakland, California. At the time of this interview, they were the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Peacock Rebellion, an Oakland-based BIPOC, queer- and trans-led arts organization, as well as the co-organizer of the Liberated 23rd Ave. cultural land trust in Oakland. They additionally were an organizer at the Queer Cultural Center, home of the National Queer Arts...

Trevor Paglen

Artist, Geographer, and Author
Trevor Paglen gave a Visiting Artist Talk at the Arts Research Center on April 24, 2018.

Trevor Paglen lives and works in New York, NY. As an artist, filmmaker, investigator, technologist, and theorist, Paglen asks questions around vision, perception, materiality, and aesthetics. His wide-ranging oeuvre includes work on artificial intelligence and computer vision, aerospace technology, secrecy and conspiracy, experimental landscapes, speculative fiction, nuclear histories, notional archaeology, psychological operations, and the Weird.

Paglen has photographed secret...

Solveig Øvstebø

Executive Director and Chief Curator at the Astrup Fearnley Museet
Solveig Øvstebø was a Visiting Curator Panel Participant at the Feminist Curatorial Practices Roundtable Conversation at the Arts Research Center on April 11, 2018.

Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1973, Solveig Øvstebø undertook post-graduate studies in art history at the University of Bergen and was the former Director of Bergen Kunsthall, developing it into one of the main contemporary art institutions in Norway, with a focus on production, research and discourse.

She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions, including Looking is Political: Nairy Baghramian;...