In Common Writers Series: Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, reading from their work

• I am always haunted by the wise words of my great great Uncle Tony when a family heirloom was lost. He said, “You got to look where it ain’t.”… I make work that allows the dead to talk.
  —Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, KACH Studio

The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series presents Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, in the second event of a two-evening program, reading their work at amazing University Press Books on Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley. Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, this event is free and open to the public.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her artwork and performances of experimental texts have been reviewed by the LA Times, Artforum, The Huffington Post and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in Not That But This, Obsidian Journal, and Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics. She is the author of an artist book, Kentifrications: Convergent Truth(s) & Realities, published by Occidental College and Sming Sming Books. SIR, a relection on naming as a tool for undefining the defined, is her first book of poetry, and is newly published by Litmus Press. Hinkle is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice. Her visual art and performance works are on view at kachstudio.com.

Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a writer, scholar, occasional musician, and author of the chapbooks Pull: a ballad (The Operating System, 2014) and As For the Future (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2016), the latter originating from a talk at Naropa speculating on Clarice Lispector and Sun Ra. Her recent writings have been published by Omniverse, Social Text Online, Amerarcana/Shuffle Boil (on musician/composer Matana Roberts — check Coldfront for a prefatory note to Roberts’ Coin Coin project), The Daily Gramma, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. Born and raised in Houston, Texas by Iranian and Salvadoran immigrants, she lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her current poetics circles around diasporic myth-making, family histories, the sociopolitical entanglements that bring people together, and the relationship between spirit(s), possession, and American history and identity. More here.

In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with (for the most part) local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.