Intersections of Identity and Experience

In this webinar, open to prose writers and poets of all ages and backgrounds, participants will use freewriting, revision, and in-depth feedback as tools to create work that can spark new writing possibilities or build on an existing project. The class will address these types of questions: How do we synthesize our experiences and histories with acts of imagination? How do we break silences and heal from trauma through storytelling? How do we write about intersections between race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other aspects of our identities in effective and nuanced ways? Participants will be encouraged to draw from personal, family, and cultural histories, in a supportive yet critically constructive writing environment. Please register using “ticket” link below.

Brian Komei Dempster’s debut book of poetry, Topaz, was published by Four Way Books in 2013 and received the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry. His most recent book is Seize. He is the editor of both From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s Concentration Camps (Kearny Street Workshop, 2001), which received a 2007 Nisei Voices Award from the National Japanese American Historical Society, and Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement (Heyday, 2011). He is a professor of rhetoric and language and a faculty member in Asian Pacific American Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award (along with Ronald Sundstrom) in 2010. Currently, he divides his time between teaching and serving as Director of Administration for the Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies.