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...

VIDA Reviews! Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay

VIDA Reviews! Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay

Content note: this piece discusses the trauma and minimization of sexual misconduct In the introduction of Not That Bad, Roxane Gay begins, “When I was...

The Authored Self

The Authored Self

Writing, for me, means freedom. Which is to say, everything prior to discovering writing was entrapment. You cannot desire freedom, you cannot be gripped by...

The Dictator in My Notebook: On Censorship and the Risks of Writing

The Dictator in My Notebook: On Censorship and the Risks of Writing

My mother used to warn me, “Never write anything down you wouldn’t want someone else to read. Not in a letter. Not in a diary....

Finding Home Through Literature: A Study of Filipino Fiction

Finding Home Through Literature: A Study of Filipino Fiction

All my life, I felt ashamed because I was born in America. Growing up in Los Angeles, CA, in the nineties, an American, to me,...

Report from the Field– Speak Test: The Silencing of the Racialized Body

Report from the Field– Speak Test: The Silencing of the Racialized Body

In my third year as an MFA student, I received an email from my English department requesting that I schedule and pass a Spoken English...

Some Questions About Empathy and Reading

Some Questions About Empathy and Reading

First Questions: The Limits of Empathy I taught two creative writing courses as a graduate student. My undergraduates wanted answers and rules, and instead I...