The UTSA Creative Writing Reading Series was inaugurated in 1983 when Carolyn Forché read on a Friday afternoon to a room of 100 people. Over the years the series has hosted such writers as Mary Oliver, Ernest Gaines, Tobias Wolff, Karen Tei Yamashita, Evie Shockley, Denise Levertov, Alberto Ríos, Pat Mora, Diane Wakoski, Edward Hirsch, and many other poets and fiction writers who not only give public readings but also visit classes and meet with students about their writing. We’ve had as many as twelve readings by visiting writers in a year but have settled on three or four annually as an ideal number. This reading series is made possible through the generosity of our Donors.
Events
Art Above Everything with Stephanie Elizondo Griest
September 18th at 6:30pm| Northwest Vista College Auditorium| Innovation Center, Manzanillo 203
Presented in partnership with Gemini Ink
Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s Art Above Everything introduces us to legendary writers, visual artists, dancers, and musicians across the globe, who talk intimately about their art, what it requires, what it gifts them, and what it costs them. Opening in a classical Indian dance village, Elizondo Griest goes on to meet 100+ artists in Rwanda, Romania, Qatar, Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, Cuba, and the United States. She discovers artists from Rwandan playwright Hope Azeda, who navigated ethnic tensions as she attempted to bring about reconciliation through theater in the aftermath of genocide; to Romanian painter Florica Prevenda, who got assigned to a provincial factory during Ceauşescu’s dictatorship but never relinquished her brushes.
Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought with Dr. Bettina Judd
October 3 at 6pm| Esperanza Peace and Justice Center| 922 San Pedro Ave
Presented in partnership with Gemini Ink & Esperanza Peace and Justice Center
In Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought, Dr Bettina Judd discusses how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work. Dr Judd will read from her book at the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center on Friday October 3 at 6:00PM. Free and open to the public.
