Poets and Scholars Summer Writing Retreat 2021
Our 2021 participants are pictured here. Learn more about them.
About the Retreat
The inaugural retreat, which ran from July 13 to July 23, 2021, featured 10 days of presentations, talk-backs, and a radical reimagining of traditional writing workshops that allowed for the participation of auditors who may or may not consider themselves writers, but want nonetheless to contribute to the mission of the retreat. Participants included writers of all disciplines, genres, and backgrounds who are committed to anti-racist writing practices. The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice seeks to create spaces for scholars and creative writers to be in conversation as both an aspect of their work and for the mutual exchange of knowledge within and throughout the university and its surrounding communities.
The 2022 retreat will take place from July 11–July 21, 2022. More information will be announced soon.
Who's Who at the Retreat
Keynote Speaker: Felicia Rose Chavez
Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom and co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT with Willie Perdomo and Jose Olivarez. Felicia’s teaching career began in Chicago, where she served as program director to Young Chicago Authors and founded GirlSpeak, a feminist webzine for high school students. She went on to teach writing at the University of New Mexico, where she was distinguished as the Most Innovative Instructor of the Year; the University of Iowa, where she was distinguished as the Outstanding Instructor of the Year; and Colorado College, where she received the Theodore Roosevelt Collins Outstanding Faculty Award. Her creative scholarship earned her a Ronald E. McNair Fellowship, a University of Iowa Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, a Riley Scholar Fellowship, and a Hadley Creatives Fellowship. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she currently serves as Creativity and Innovation Scholar-in-Residence at Colorado College. For more information about The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, and to access (and add to!) a multigenre compilation of contemporary writers of color, please visit www.antiracistworkshop.com.
Retreat Faculty: Airea D. Matthews
Airea D. Matthews’ first collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which received the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Airea received a 2020 Pew Fellowship and a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and was awarded the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Airea earned her M.F.A. from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College where she directs the Poetry Program. Airea is currently training to be a yoga teacher.
Retreat Faculty: Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo’s collection Digest (Four Way Books) won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Other honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts for translation. His first poetry collection, Totem, won the APR/Honickman Prize in 2007. He is poetry editor of Virginia Quarterly Review; Rutgers–Camden codirector, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice; and associate professor of creative writing and director of the M.F.A. program at Rutgers–Camden. His most recent book is Air Traffic, a memoir in essays. He lives in Brooklyn where he cooks for his wife, daughters, puppy, and rabbit.
Retreat Faculty: Naomi Jackson
Naomi Jackson is the author of the novel The Star Side of Bird Hill, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the International Dublin Literary Award. Jackson’s writings have appeared in Harper’s, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Writer. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from Bread Loaf, MacDowell Colony, Djerassi, Hedgebrook, the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Camargo Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Bronx Council on the Arts. She is assistant professor of English at Rutgers–Newark.
Presenters
DaMaris B. Hill
DaMaris B. Hill is the author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland, The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, and \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Tekschərs\(Visible Textures). DeMaris is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Kentucky.
Jonah Mixon-Webster
Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet. His debut collection, Stereo(TYPE), received the PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and the PEN Writing for Justice Program
Laura Raicovich
Laura Raicovich is a writer and curator who published Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest in June 2021. She recently served as interim director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art and previously was director of the Queens Museum and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center.
Patrick Rosal
Patrick Rosal is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and awardee of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Research Program. He has performed and read his work widely across four continents and at hundreds of venues throughout the United States. The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2021. Patrick is Rutgers–Camden codirector, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and professor of creative writing at Rutgers–Camden.
L. Lamar Wilson
L. Lamar Wilson’s documentary poetics animates Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013) and The Changing Same, a collaboration with Rada Film Group (POV Shorts, 2019), which streams at American Documentary and airs on PBS. His poems often center communities like Burden Hill in his Florida Panhandle hometown, Marianna.
Rachel Zolf
Rachel Zolf has published five books of poetry, with a selected poetry, Social Poesis, released in 2019. Zolf’s No One’s Witness: A Monstrous Poetics appears from Duke University Press in Fall 2021. They live in Philadelphia and are an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Respondents
Teri Ellen Cross Davis
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, the 2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize winner, and Haint, awarded the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. A Cave Canem fellow and member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective, she is the Folger Shakespeare Library poetry coordinator.
Anaïs Duplan
Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of upcoming book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), and a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020). He founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, a residency program for artists of color, at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One.
Yandon Israel
Yahdon Israel is a senior editor at Simon Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, LitHub, Poets and Writers and Vanity Fair. He teaches creative writing at City College, and hosts the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club.
Rosemarie Peña
Rosemarie Peña, M.A., Ph.D. in childhood studies, is an adjunct professor of German studies in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver and is the founder and president of the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) at bghra.org.
Arisa White
Arisa White is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Colby College and a Cave Canem fellow. She is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice series for young readers. She serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press.
Steering Committee
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Mark Doty: Distinguished professor of English and director of Writers House, Rutgers University–New Brunswick; winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
Adam Fitzgerald: Creating writing instructor, Rutgers University–New Brunswick; author of two collections of poetry, The Late Parade and George Washington
Naomi Jackson: Assistant professor of English, Rutgers University–Newark; author of the novel The Star Side of Bird Hill
Akil Kumarasamy: Assistant professor of fiction, Rutgers University–Newark; author of the story collection Half Gods
Airea Dee Matthews: Assistant professor and Poetry Program director, Bryn Mawr College; author of the poetry collection Simulacra
Gregory Pardlo: Rutgers–Camden codirector, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice; associate professor of creative writing and director of the M.F.A. program, Rutgers–Camden; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
David Ramirez: Development officer, Rutgers University Foundation
Lectures and Talkbacks
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Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Lecture:“No One’s Witness: A Monstrous Poetics,” by Dr. Rachel Zolf
Rachel Zolf has published five books of poetry, with a selected poetry, Social Poesis, released in 2019. Zolf’s No One’s Witness: A Monstrous Poetics appears from Duke University Press in Fall 2021. They live in Philadelphia and are an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Lecture: “To Cradle a Specter - Black Hauntology in My Work,” by Dr. DaMaris Hill
DaMaris B. Hill is the author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland, The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, and \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Tekschərs\(Visible Textures). DeMaris is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Kentucky.
Call and Response: Terri Cross Davis and Dr. DaMaris Hill in conversation
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of A More Perfect Union, the 2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize winner, and Haint, awarded the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. A Cave Canem fellow and member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective, she is the Folger Shakespeare Library poetry coordinator.
Monday, July 19, 2021
Lecture: “Black Hauntology,” by Dr. Jonah Mixon-Webster
Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet. His debut collection, Stereo(TYPE), received the PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and the PEN Writing for Justice Program.
Call and Response: Anaïs Duplan in conversation with Dr. Jonah Mixon-Webster
Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of upcoming book I NEED MUSIC (Action Books, 2021), and a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020). He founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, a residency program for artists of color, at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Lecture: “Culture Strike: Art and Museums in the Age of Protest,” by Dr. Laura Raicovich
Laura Raicovich is a writer and curator who published Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest in June 2021. She recently served as interim director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art and previously was director of the Queens Museum and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center.
Call and Response: Yahdon Israel in conversation with Gregory Pardlo
Yahdon Israel is a senior editor at Simon Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, LitHub, Poets and Writers and Vanity Fair. He teaches creative writing at City College, and hosts the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club.
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Documentary Screening: "The Changing Same" by Dr. L. Lamar Wilson
L. Lamar Wilson’s documentary poetics animates Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013) and The Changing Same, a collaboration with Rada Film Group (POV Shorts, 2019), which streams at American Documentary and airs on PBS. His poems often center communities like Burden Hill in his Florida Panhandle hometown, Marianna.
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Lecture: “Disparate Comm Talk,” by Dr. Patrick Rosal
Patrick Rosal is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and awardee of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Research Program. He has performed and read his work widely across four continents and at hundreds of venues throughout the United States. The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming in 2021. Patrick is Rutgers–Camden codirector, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and professor of creative writing at Rutgers–Camden.
Call and Response: Dr. Rosemarie Peña in conversation with Dr. Patrick Rosal
Rosemarie Peña, M.A., Ph.D. in childhood studies, is an adjunct professor of German studies in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver and is the founder and president of the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) at bghra.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Q: What is an anti-racist workshop? How does it differ from a traditional writing workshop?
A: We borrow the model of the anti-racist workshop that strengthens writers of color through “innovative reading, writing, workshop, critique, and assessment strategies,” from Felicia Rose Chavez’s book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom (Haymarket Books, 2021). The anti-racist workshop asks writers to interrogate the positions from which they are speaking (both as writers and as critics in response to peers’ writings), and not to presume objectivity. In contrast to traditional writing workshops whose critiques respond to only what is “on the page,” the anti-racist workshop takes into account multiple ways of knowing and acknowledges the social and cultural context that shapes the act of creating and sharing literature. This workshop also explores ways of making legible the contexts of which the writer may have been unaware in the process of creation. The anti-racist workshop centers marginalized identities and acknowledges that “craft” is itself a cultural construct. We envision this workshop as an open learning community.
Q. Can only poets apply or attend?
A: No. Program participants are drawn from all disciplinary backgrounds throughout the humanities and beyond, including but not limited to writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and literary scholars.
Q: This program is named Poets and Scholars Summer Writing Retreat. How do scholars fit in?
A: This program seeks to resist the boundaries between creative and critical practice. The retreat will encourage mutual exchange and transdisciplinarity among poets and scholars. The name of the program acknowledges the truth that everyone who is engaged in crafting language is concerned with the language of craft. “Theory” as bell hooks tells us, “is liberatory practice.”
Q: What is the format of the writing retreat?
A: The Poets and Scholars Summer Writing Retreat meets virtually for 10 days from July 13 to July 23, 2021. The workshops will be augmented by lectures that offer innovative and interdisciplinary frameworks to inspire new conversations around writing and racial justice. Each lecture will be followed by a moderated talk-back with featured respondents and Q&A.
Q: I missed the application deadline. May I still participate as an auditor?
A: Yes. In addition to presenters and our participant cohort, groups of writers, individual writers, artists, thinkers, and makers are invited to join us as registered auditors. Auditors may attend all workshops and lectures, and may offer questions and comment, movie theater-style, through the moderated chat function.
Q: Do I have to pay to register or join the events?
A: No. All of the programs are free.
Q: How do I register for the events as an auditor?
A: We are no longer accepting applications for contributing participants, however, auditors may register for events by clicking here.
Q: Where can I find a link to retreat webinars, content, presentations, meetings, and events?
A: In advance of the retreat, registered contributing participants and auditors will be given the URL for a master webpage that will contain all pertinent webinar information and links. Participants and auditors are asked not to share the URL.
Q: Who is sponsoring this program? Where can I find out more information about the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice?
A: The Poets and Scholars Summer Writing Retreat is a collaborative effort of the creative writing programs throughout the Rutgers University community, including Rutgers–Camden, Rutgers–Newark, and Rutgers–New Brunswick. The program is underwritten by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information about the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, visit our website at https://globalracialjustice.rutgers.edu/.