Writing And Literature News
Matt Shears: 10,000 Wallpapers
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
10,000 Wallpapers
Brooklyn Arts Press, 2011
Paperback, 40 pages, $8
This is a new chapbook of poems by Matt Shears, a faculty member in Writing and Literature, Writing, and Critical Studies. Cathy Park Hong, author of Dance Dance Revolution, says, "This long lyric is full of brute terror and bucolic beauty, exploring individual consciousness unmoored by our present 'thundering interconnectivity'; 10,000 Wallpapers chronicles 'the everyman meandering through this digitized countryside,' questioning how we can truly inhabit the world when reality has become denatured by the image. The speaker in this poem sings like Prufrock, in a lyric that is searing and true, as he searches for the possibilities of pure utterance and perception amidst what is manufactured."
Read the rest >>>Michael McClure: Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems
University of California Press, 2011
Hardcover, 344 pages, $34.95
An essential collection of poems by Michael McClure, longtime CCA faculty member and 2005 recipient of CCA's honorary doctorate of fine arts. It contains the most original, radical, and visionary work of a major poet who has been garnering acclaim and generating controversy for more than 50 years. Ranging from "A Fist Full," published in 1957, through "Swirls in Asphalt," a new poem sequence, Of Indigo and Saffron is both an excellent introduction to this unique American voice and an impressive selection from McClure's landmark volumes for those already familiar with his work. One of the five poets who heralded the Beat movement in the 1955 Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, McClure reveals in his poetry a close kinship to Romanticism, Modernism, Surrealism, and Japanese haiku.
Read the rest >>>Gloria Frym: Any Time Soon
Posted on Monday, February 6, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
Any Time Soon
Little Red Leaves, 2010
Paperback, 36 pages, $8
"In the case of Vietnam, what is a reference" wrote Michael Palmer more than 20 years ago in the context of a different war and different time. In Any Time Soon, Gloria Frym (faculty in Writing and Writing and Literature) writes from the reality that "there is no post war" or external context from which to view our current saturation. Language occurs in the thick of it, taking a "swipe at friendly fire," watching "the poles and their birdhouses." Yet, as in this line, where political obsession twists towards avian respite, Frym's lines torque from exasperation, and critique, to tenderness. Or, to put it another way, she writes "I would like to find money / you didn't know I had / Under my pillow in an unmarked envelope / on a rose marked High Octane Stocks / Can you handle this?"
Read the rest >>>Queer Comic Artists ENGAGE a "New" Writing Genre
Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012, by Jim Norrena
CCA is no stranger to branching out in various genres when it comes to the arts. The college's undergraduate Writing and Literature curriculum is no exception. In spring, the ENGAGE: Queer Comics Project course provided graphic novel enthusiasts the unique opportunity to not only study writing and graphic design but also to do so within a queer perspective!
Read the rest >>>An Evening with David Sedaris to Benefit CCA Scholarships
Posted on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, by Chris Bliss
Best-selling author and NPR humorist David Sedaris will appear at a special benefit reading for California College of the Arts (CCA) on May 3, 2012, at Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. The evening will include a reading from new and unpublished material, a book signing, and, for sponsorship donors, a VIP cocktail party with the author at Berkeley Art Museum. Proceeds will benefit the CCA Scholarship Fund.
Read the rest >>>KQED Arts: Eleven Eleven: Class, Literary Journal, Network, Micro-Canon
Posted on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, by Allison Byers
If you're in the habit of kissing the clock at 11:11, you should know that Eleven Eleven, the literary journal produced by the graduate program of the California College of the Arts, is releasing its eleventh issue this Friday, 11/11/11. To celebrate, Faculty Editor Hugh Behm-Steinberg, who has had the helm since late 2007, has invited one contributor from each issue to read at the release, and one staff member from each respective issue to introduce them.
Read the rest >>>CCA MFA Program in Writing Presents Anne Waldman, December 2, 2011
Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011, by Allison Byers
San Francisco, Calif., November 7, 2011—California College of the Arts is pleased to announce a reading by the acclaimed poet Anne Waldman on Friday, December 2, 2011. It will take place at 3:30 p.m. in CCA’s Writers’ Studio, located at 195 De Haro Street (at 15th Street), San Francisco. The event is free and open to the public. It is presented by CCA’s MFA Program in Writing as part of the program’s ongoing Writers Series.
Read the rest >>>CCA Welcomes New Faculty for Academic Year 2011-12
Posted on Tuesday, August 30, 2011, by Chris Bliss
For additional information about CCA's 2011-12 faculty hiring, read the latest Academic Newsletter by Provost Mark Breitenberg.
New Full-Time Faculty
Read the rest >>>Marianne Rogoff: The Best Women's Travel Writing 2011
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011, by Lindsey Westbrook
The Best Women's Travel Writing 2011
Travelers' Tales, 2011
Paperback, 352 pages, $18.95
Marianne Rogoff (Writing and Literature faculty) contributes the short story "Common Tongues" to the latest edition of The Best Women's Travel Writing. The story takes place in the context of a week-long writers' retreat in Todos Santos, Mexico. After an evening's bickering and mean margarita workshop, the characters devolve into foreign-language laughter dialogues with the Latvians who have moved into the rooms next door at Hotel California. Other stories in the book tell of wild horses in the American Southwest, riding the backroads of old China on a motorcycle, walking the walk of Muslim women in Egypt, fighting it out in a kung fu monastery in China, discovering the hidden magic of Flamenco in Spain, and more.
Read the rest >>>Recent Alums Kevin Krueger and Kristin Olson Spin Stories in Mixed Media
Posted on Monday, June 13, 2011, by Marion Anthonisen
Hi all! Here on the CCA admissions blog, summertime is our special opportunity to introduce you to a few recent CCA graduates and to share stories of awesome summer internships.
Let's start with the graduates: Kevin Krueger and Kristin Olson, who each graduated in 2011 from the Individualized Major Program, moved to San Francisco to attend CCA after meeting (and getting married!) in Santa Cruz.
Read the rest >>>