Tonight (March 7) in Butler Building #4 on the CalArts campus, four School of Critical Studies graduates will read from their works and discuss the writing life at an Alumni Publishing Panel. Sponsored by the MFA Creative Writing Program and moderated by program director Janet Sarbanes, the panel comprises: Andrew Choate (MFA 03), Anne-Marie Kinney (MFA 08), Felicia Luna Lemus (MFA 01) and Amar Ravva (MFA 04).
Choate has been publishing his writings on music and art since 1998. As a poet, he doesn’t pander to audiences with his use of text. According to The Rumpus, his latest chapbook, Stingray Clapping (Insert Blanc Press 2012), “is hilarious. Each phrase reads like a malapropism, one so confidently dispensed it seems already a part of everyday use. The familiarity is eerily gripping,”
Kinney’s first novel, Radio Iris (Two Dollar Radio 2012), has “a lovely, eerie, anxious quality to it,” noted The New York Times. In 2010, Kinney’s short story “Ask Us Anything” was performed by Los Angeles’s Word Theatre. She is currently production editor of the literary magazine Black Clock, which is published semiannually by CalArts.
Publishers Weekly called Lemus’ second novel, Like Son (Akashic Books 2007), a “smart, never sentimental identity novel.” Lemus said she wanted to write a story with a transgendered protagonist that would not focus on transgenderism. “For me, trans-characters are part of the world, and trans-people are part of the world,” she noted.
Ravva’s latest work is American Canyon, forthcoming from Kaya Press. It uses prose and still photos to recount the fragmented and ever-evolving story of one person’s apprehension of the ghosts of history. In addition to his writing practice, he is a member of the site-specific ambient music group Ambient Force 3000.
Below is an LA-Lit audio recording of Ravva reading from American Canyon (reading begins at 2:30).
Alumni Publishing Panel: CalArts Grads Discuss the Writing Life
March 7, 7:30 pm
Butler Building #4, CalArts
Free
Reception to follow