Living in Liminality: Working with the Wounds of Trauma through Altered States & Poison Medicine 

Living in Liminality: Working with the Wounds of Trauma through Altered States & Poison Medicine 

Adapted from a keynote given at the 2018 Transformative Language Arts Network Power of Words Conference +++ What is the center what is the center...

I, Afterwards

I, Afterwards

nala-e-bebaak / نالۂ_بیباک (noun, urdu): an audacious sorrow The first signs of verbal violence emerged from a constant comparison between his own literary outputs v/s mine. There...

Karaoke with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un

Karaoke with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un

I bypass the self-serve cereal cart on the patio, the subterranean foam party pulsing with sweaty go-go dancers, the dorm room where dozens of well-dressed...

Report from the Field: Of Myopia, White Supremacy and the Personal Essay

Report from the Field: Of Myopia, White Supremacy and the Personal Essay

In 2017, I took my first creative nonfiction workshop with a reputed author, editor, and teacher of creative writing in the heart of Los Angeles,...

Spam Stigma: An Open Letter to White People

Spam Stigma: An Open Letter to White People

Dear bougie white people of America— I am a SPAM®-Eater—and I am not ashamed. Yes, you read that right. I eat Spam. You know, that...

Kill Your Heroes: Examining Marianne Moore’s Fraught Racial, Misogynistic, and Capitalist Politics

Kill Your Heroes: Examining Marianne Moore’s Fraught Racial, Misogynistic, and Capitalist Politics

Gwendolyn Brooks had already become the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry when fellow poet Marianne Moore sent this letter...

On Conclusion and Findings: A Conversation Between Yanyi and Catalina Ouyang

On Conclusion and Findings: A Conversation Between Yanyi and Catalina Ouyang

Catalina Ouyang‘s ongoing project Conclusion and Findings (working title) is a participatory event that takes various material forms. The artist invites writers to create poetic...

Report from the Field: Native Women Writers Take on the ‘Indian Du Jour’

Report from the Field: Native Women Writers Take on the ‘Indian Du Jour’

Indian Country and, in particular, the Native writing community, is grieving today because of the scandal (known among many Native women writers for years) that...