Important Note: The event is canceled due to inclement weather. 

Join the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) from Monday, January 8 through Friday, January 12, 2024, as the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFACW) program presents an Evening Reading Series featuring program mentors and special guests. Each evening will engage its audience with poetry, memoir, or fiction from some of today’s most vibrant and vital writers.

Evening Reading Series Events

• (Canceled) Monday, January 8, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by Carribean Fragoza, Brian Evenson, and Janet Sarbanes from CalArts—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Tuesday, January 9, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by dg okpik (Iñupiaq-Inuit), Kelli Jo Ford (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), Jennifer Foerster (Muscogee [Creek] Nation of Oklahoma)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Wednesday, January 10, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by Pam Houston, Raquel Gutierrez, Bojan Louis (Diné)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Thursday, January 11, 6:30 pm (MST): Readings by Leslie Jamison, Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota), Mona Susan Power (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe)—CLE Commons, IAIA Campus
• Friday, January 12, 4:30–6 pm (MST): Reading and Q&A with Kim Blaeser (White Earth Nation) and Deborah Taffa (Quechan [Yuma] Nation and Laguna Pueblo)—IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA)

Bios

Brian Evenson: Brian Evenson is the author of more than a dozen fiction books, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses (Coffee House Press, 2015) and the critical book Ed Vs. Yummy Fur: Or What Happens When a Serial Comic Becomes a Graphic Novel (Uncivilized, 2014).  His collection Windeye (2012) and the novel Immobility (2012) were both finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the 2009 ALA-RUSA Award). His novel The Open Curtain (2004) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, Manuela Draeger, David B., and others. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes and an NEA fellowship. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian.

Carribean Fragoza: Growing up in the peripheries of the Greater LA region and outside of Chicano communities of East LA that have largely come to define Chicano identity, including in culture and literature, has shaped my literary approach. Rather than sticking to the usual tropes of Chicanx and Latinx writing, I break onto new thematic territory with unique character voices and perspectives. As a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), I push the boundaries of Chicanx literature using experimental approaches and devices and freely borrow from international queer and feminist literary movements. I have published fiction and poetry in publications such as BOMB Magazine, Huizache, Entropy, Palabra Literary Magazine, and Emohippus. My arts/culture reviews and essays have been published in online national and international magazines such as Aperture, Los Angeles Review of Books, LA Weekly, KCET, Culture Strike, and Tropics of Meta. I am also the founder and co-director of the South El Monte Art Posse (SEMAP), a multi-disciplinary arts collective.

Janet Sarbanes is the author of the short story collections Army of One and The Protester Has Been Released and a book of essays, Letters on the Autonomy Project, which explores autonomy as a political and aesthetic concept and practice. The recipient of a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol art writer’s grant, Sarbanes has published art criticism and other critical writing in museum catalogs, anthologies, and journals, including East of Borneo, Afterall, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her essay on Shaker aesthetics and utopian communalism received the Eugenio Battisti Prize from the Society for Utopian Studies. In addition to offering BFA classes, she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program and the MA Aesthetics and Politics. She currently serves as Director of Faculty Affairs.

MFA in Creative Writing

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is designed as a two-year program with two intensive week-long residencies per year (summer and winter) at IAIA. Students and faculty mentors gather for a week of workshops, lectures, and readings. At the end of the residency week, each student is matched with a faculty mentor, who then works one-on-one with the student for the semester. IAIA’s program is unique in that we emphasize the importance of Indigenous writers speaking to the Indigenous experience. The literature we read carries a distinct Native American and First Nations emphasis. The MAFCW offers four areas of emphasis: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting.

The deadline to apply for the 2024 academic year is Feb. 1 by 5 pm (MST).