Bead by Bead: Contemporary Native Writing

June 10, 2014
Bead by Bead: Contemporary Native Writing
Indira Allegra/Jewelle Gomez/Kim Shuck
AAACC
7:30pm

Tickets: $12 – $20
Brown Paper Tickets Link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/671024

Bead by Bead: Contemporary Native Writing, is a literary salon featuring Two-Spirit authors making critical contributions to the fields of poetry, fiction and creative
non-fiction. Join Jewelle Gomez, Kim Shuck, Indira Allegra, Greg Sarris, Qwo-Li Driskill, Nazbah Tom and Moon Flower as they offer up narratives that attest to the brilliant, ongoing vision of Two-Spirit people today. These authors labor over their texts bead by bead, writing stories that can be sewn together to create complex legacies of love and survival for the future to inherit.

BIOGRAPHIES

Indira Allegra Indira Allegra is a poet and artist exploring intimacy, intertextuality, affect and endurance through performance, video works and handwoven textiles. Indira has contributed works to 25 for 25: An Anthology of Works by 25 Outstanding Contemporary LGTB Authors, Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, Dear Sister: Letters From Survivors of Sexual Violence, Cherokee Writers from the Flint Hills of Oklahoma and Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two Spirit Literature among others. In 2013, she was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 for Poetry of Gold and Angels, a segment on poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Indira’s experimental videopoems Blue Covers and Weep Willow: The Blues for Lady Day have screened at film festivals such as MIX NYC, Perlen Hannover LGBT Festival, Visible Verse Festival and Fusion. In the Bay Area, Indira has performed with Queer Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance, Mangos with Chili and Peacock Rebellion. Her textile works have shown at the Alter Space gallery in San Francisco. She is currently completing her first collection of poems entitled Indigo Season. indiraallegra.com

 

Qwo-Li Driskill is a non-citizen Cherokee Asegi Udanto (Two-Spirit) writer, teacher, and activist also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent. They’re the author of Walking with Ghosts: Poems and the co-editor of Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature and Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature. They are an assistant professor of Queer Studies in the Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Oregon State University.

 

Moon Flower (Mexica) is a Native, two spirit, multi-disciplinary artist and tribal scholar of pacha mama (mother earth) and the great universe. Her poems and artwork have appeared in Turtle Island to Abya Yala (Malinalli Press, 2011), Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out (Inanna Publications, 2010), Red Ink Magazine, and elsewhere. She has a M.F.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Mills College. In 2009, she was awarded an American Indian Artists Residency at the Montana Artists Refuge to pursue her creative writing. Moon Flower has been fortunate to share the stage with many talented artists including Mystic, Audiopharmacy, Quese IMC, Genny Lim, Naomi Quiñonez, Jennifer Lisa Vest, Desirae Harp and Nizhoni Ellenwood. Some of her most memorable performances have been at the Intertribal Friendship House, Gathering Tribes, Galería de la Raza, SF JAZZ Center, and the de Young Museum. Her debut poetry book Love and the Lost Nation can be ordered at: http://www.moonflower.biz

 

Jewelle Gomez (Cape Verdean/Ioway/Wampanoag) is the author of seven books including the double Lambda Literary Award-winning Black, Lesbian vampire novel, The Gilda Stories.  Her adaptation of the novel was commissioned and performed by the Urban Bush Women Company in 13 US cities.  Her most recent play about James Baldwin, Waiting for Giovanni, premiered in San Francisco at the New Conservatory Theatre Center.  Her new play, Leaving the Blues, about singer/composer Alberta Hunter will premiere in 2015.  Her forthcoming comic novel, Televised, captures the 30th anniversary reunion of survivors of the Black Power student movement. @VampyreVamp, www.jewellegomez.com

 

Greg Sarris received his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Walter Gore Award for excellence in teaching.  He has published several books, including Grand Avenue (1994), an award-winning collection of short stories, which he adapted for an HBO miniseries and co-executive produced with Robert Redford.  He is serving his eleventh elected term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.  Formerly a full professor of English at UCLA, and then the Fletcher Jones Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University, Greg now holds the position of Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria Endowed Chair of Sonoma State University, where he teaches a number of courses in Creative Writing, American Literature, and American Indian Literature. greg-sarris.com

 

Kim Shuck is a poet, weaver, educator and was born in her mother’s hometown of San Francisco. Her ancestors were and are Tsalagi, Sauk and Fox and Polish, for the most part. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in weaving in 1998 from San Francisco State University. As a poet Kim has read her work around the US and elsewhere. In late 2005 she toured through Jordan with a group of poets from all over the globe in the interest of peace and communication. Shuck is the author of Smuggling Cherokee and Rabbit Stories. Kim’s visual art has been included in shows both locally and abroad such as a textile show at the National Museum of Taiwan in Taipei and Art, Women, California at the San Jose Art Museum. She consults with museums and galleries around California on the subjects of Native artwork and community inclusion. kimshuck.com

 

Nazbah Tom Nazbah Tom is Dine, born and raised on her ancestral homelands in Northeastern Arizona. She is published in Turtle Island to Abya Yala: A Love Anthology of Art and Poetry by Native American and Latina Women and in an online journal archive curated by Kim Shuck, Rabbit and Rose. Her first CD of poetry, Language Nest, is out and available by request at [email protected]. Nazbah is currently working on a biospiritual allegorical play called Sacred Script that explores and deconstructs “dilbaa” the masculine presenting women of the Dine as well Sheep Chronicles, poetry woven into folded paper, watercolor, and wool. She performs all over the Bay Area and does her best to capture poems haunting her at all hours of the day.