In Conversation: David Mura

The Writers House in conversation with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice welcomes poet, writer, and artist David Mura.

With support from an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Advocacy (IDEA) Innovation Grant, the Writers House and the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice welcome poet, writer, and artist David Mura for a reading and discussion moderated by Patrick Rosal.

David Mura’s most recent book is the acclaimed The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives. His previous book was on creative writing and race, A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing. With essayist Carolyn Holbrook, Mura co-edited the 2021 anthology of Minnesota BIPOC writers, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World. He has just finished a book of essays on Asian American issues and his own personal journey, Exit: Miss Saigon, which will appear in Sept. 2026.

Mura is a poet, creative nonfiction writer, fiction writer, critic, playwright and performance artist. A Sansei or third generation Japanese American, Mura has written two memoirs: Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei , which won a 1991 Josephine Miles Book Award from the Oakland PEN and was listed in the New York Times Notable Books of Year, and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity. His novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

Mura has written four books of poetry, including Angels for the Burning and The Last Incantations. His second, The Colors of Desire, won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library, and his first After We Lost Our Way was a National Poetry Contest winner.

Mura co-produced, wrote and narrated the Emmy winning documentary by Twin Cities Public Television, Armed With Language, about the Japanese American Military Intelligence Service linguists who served in WWII. In 2024, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in General Nonfiction.

Patrick Rosal is the author of five full-length poetry collections including The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems, which was listed among the best books of 2021 by The Boston Globe, in addition to winning the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Research Scholar program, as well as residencies from Civitella Ranieri and Lannan. His writing and visual work has been published in The New York Times, The Nation, e-flux, Best American Poetry and many other journals and magazines. He has taught at Bloomfield College, the University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, as well as in many community workshops around the country through Poets House, Kundiman, the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, and elsewhere. A winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, he has performed as poet and musician in Europe, Africa, Asia, and throughout the Americas at venues that include Lincoln Center, NJPAC, the Cabrillo housing projects for agricultural workers, and Filipino Community Hall in Delano— comprising a writing and performance career spanning more than twenty years and reaching a myriad of audiences around the world.

This event will be held on Zoom, and registration is required. To foster a sense of community, cameras are encouraged (but not required).