January 10, 2020
I’ll be reading new work from CARRIE BURIED BENEATH CATALPA BEANS at the Modern Language Association reading sponsored by MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics – University of Washington Bothell
Town Hall Forum, 1119 8th Avenue, Seattle (down stairs) Friday, January 10, 2020 at 10:30 PM EST – 2 AM EST. Other authors include Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Douglas Kearney, Rae Armantrout, Rebecca Brown, Monica de la Torre, Sarah Mangold, Amaranth Borsuk, and more.
CARRIE BURIED BENEATH CATALPA BEANS / MOUNTAIN SWEEP was created through a commission by FACT (The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), a National Endowment for the Arts residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Theo Westenberger Foundation, and Creative Capital. —> Quintan Ana Wikswo’s suite of photographs, poems, and essays surrounds the Western State Lunatic Asylum, Central State Mental Hospital, and the State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded: three segregated United States government-run eugenics asylums in rural Virginia. She created the work at the mass graves, cemeteries, and medical facilities using salvaged government cameras and typewriters manufactured during the 1930s and 40s by institutional slave labor. Under the pretense of providing psychiatric care, these three asylums were used to segregate, persecute, and police the lives of people who were deemed noncompliant to social norms. With a proud and publicly stated ideology of wealthy white supremacist social purity, these facilities perpetrated catastrophic crimes against humanity throughout the entire 20th century, and created a legacy of bigotry that still pervades mental health institutions today.
A Mosaic of Fifty Writers Reading Their Work
Kazim Ali
Rae Armantrout
Diana Arterian
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Woogee Bae
Quenton Baker
Amaranth Borsuk
Julie Phillips Brown
Rebecca Brown
Amy Sara Carroll
Sarah Chavez
Ching-In Chen
Richard Chiem
Kate Colby
Michael Cross
Zhang Er
C. R. Grimmer
Stefania Heim
Jeanne Heuving
Ted Hiebert
Ever Jones
Douglas Kearney
Larissa Lai
Donato Mancini
Natalie Martinez
Nadine Antoinette Maestas
Sarah Mangold
Joe Milutis
Robert Mittenthal
Paul Nelson
Aldon Nielsen
Katelyn Opegard
Bob Perelman
James Reed
Katie Schaag
Leonard Schwartz
Lisa Sewell
Prageeta Sharma
Ada Smailbegovic
Danny Snelson
Maya Sonenberg
Billie Swift
Ken Taylor
Monica de la Torre
Matthew Trease
Lesley Wheeler
Quintan Ana Wikswo
Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Tyrone Williams
Deborah Woodard