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New Writing Series Fall 2007

Brighde Mullins, Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 4:30-6:00 p.m. at the Visual Arts Facility: Performance Space
bmullins Playwright and poet Brighde Mullins was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ms. Mullins is the author of over fifteen plays that have been produced to critical acclaim in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Her chapbook of poems, Water Stories, was published in 2003. Currently, Ms. Mullins is a playwright-in-residence with Venice-based theater collective Workshop 360, which produced her play, Fire Eater, in 2004. She is also a core member at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, where she will be developing a new theater text. Ms Mullins holds MFAs from the Yale School of Drama and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is currently Director of the MFA Writing Program at CalArts. Her awards include a Whiting Foundation Fellowship; the Will Glickman Award; an NEA Fellowship; the Jane Chambers Award; and residencies at Lincoln Center, New York Stage and Film, Mabou Mines, and the Institute for Art and Civic Dialogue.
Kirmen Uribe and Elizabeth Macklin, Wednesday, November 7, 2007, 4:30-6:00 p.m. at the Visual Arts Facility: Performance Space
kuribe Kirmen Uribe was born in Ondarroa, a fishing village in Spain's Basque country. He received an undergraduate degree in Basque philology from the University of the Basque Country. His first collection of poetry, Bitartean heldu eskutik (2001), won Spain's Premio de la Critica. Elizabeth Macklin's English translation, Meanwhile Take My Hand (2007), was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Uribe's imagery is rooted in his Basque homeland, with themes ranging from romantic love to technology, history to travel. A reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review praised the translation, noting, “The poems are each a beacon of light and memory, surrounded by conflict, explosion and interruption.

In addition to his poetry, Uribe has published essays, fiction, comics, and children’s literature. He has worked as a translator, scriptwriter, instructor, and columnist for the Basque-language daily newspaper Berria. His piece for theater, Ekidazu, has been produced by the groups Kukubiltxo and Oskorri. Uribe collaborated with poet-translator Elizabeth Macklin, singer-songwriter Mikel Urdangarin, and musicians Bingen Mendizabal and Rafa Rueda on a multimedia project integrating poetry, prose, video, music, and oral history, which was documented in the CD-books Bar Puerto (2001) and Zaharregia, txikiegia agian (2003).
emacklin Elizabeth Macklin is poet, essayist, editor, and translator. Her translations from the Basque of Kirmen Uribe have appeared in The New Yorker, Circumference, and Open City. Macklin studied at SUNY Potsdam and in Spain at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, has been part of the editorial team at The New Yorker, and is a prolific poet and translator. She currently resides in New York City where she works as a freelance editor for fiction and nonfiction writers, written poetry criticism, and writes poetry, prose, and translations. She regularly returns to the Basque Country to continue language studies.
Claudia Rankine, Thursday, November 15, 2007, 6:00 p.m. at the San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park
crankine
 A native of Jamaica, Claudia Rankine earned her B.A. from Williams College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Don't Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2004), PLOT (2001), The End of the Alphabet (1998), and Nothing in Nature is Private (1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. She also received the 2004 Academy of American Poets fellowship. She is a Professor of English at Pomona College.
Nathaniel Mackey, Friday, December 7, 2007, 4:00 p.m. at the Geisel Library, Seuss Room
nmackey
 Nathaniel Mackey is the author of nine books of poetry, including "Four for Trane," "Septet for the End of Time," "Outlantish," and "Song of the Andoumboulou," which are widely regarded as among the most innovative examples of contemporary American experimental writing. Mackey's 1985 poetry book, "Eroding Witness," was selected for publication in the National Poetry Series. He received a Whiting Writer's Award in 1993 and was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in 2001.

Mackey's two volumes of literary criticism include "Paracritical Hinge (University of Wisconsin Press,  published last year by the University of Wisconsin Press, and "Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing" (Cambridge University Press, 1993). He is editor of Hambone, is an authority on the relations between African and African American music and writing, has edited an influential anthology, "Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose" (1993), and produced a poetry CD in collaboration with contemporary jazz musicians. He has also completed three novels in a series titled "From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate"--composed as letters written by a composer/multi-instrumentalist named N, a founding member of a fictional band known as the Mystic Horn Society.

Mackey graduated with high honors in English from Princeton University in 1969 and completed his Ph.D at Stanford. He taught at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Southern California, where he directed the Black Studies Program, before joining the UCSC faculty in 1979. In 2006 he received the National Book Award in poetry for Splay Anthem.
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