Webinar: The Antifascist Artist

The Antifascist Artist:

How can writers fight against right-wing extremism in the United States?

In recent years right-wing extremist groups have specifically targeted Portland as a place to rally, recruit, and radicalize. How do communities fight back against hate on the local, national, and global level? And what role can art—in particular the written and spoken word—play in that fight?

Portland authors Cari Luna, Maryam Gabriel-Imam, Janice Lee, Sophia Shalmiyev, and Leni Zumas will read from their work and then tackle this question in a panel discussion.

This event is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, through a project grant in support of Cari Luna’s ongoing research and writing about fascism.

Click on this link to register in advance for this webinar

Cari Luna is the author of The Revolution of Every Day, which won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction. A fellow of Yaddo and Ragdale, her writing has appeared in Guernica, Salon, Jacobin, Electric Literature, Catapult, The Rumpus, PANK, and elsewhere.

Maryam Gabriel-Imam (pronouns they/she) is an Egyptian poet, scholar, singer-songwriter, translator, and disabled drag performer. They hold a masters in Middle Eastern Studies from the City University of New York, and they until very recently taught History at Rosemary Anderson High in Portland, OR for two years. They are also the up-and-coming bilingual drag performer and activist, Baba Yusef. They are also one half of the poetry-music band collaboration Yusef Wolf. Their current focus includes writing about home as absence, land as space that speaks, solidarities and community lovemaking, and interrogating while reshaping what it means to heal as a postcolonial body. Maryam is also working on their first and forthcoming poetry chapbook, Pynk Volvo Blue Apocalypse (2020).

Janice Lee is a Korean-American writer, editor, publisher, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry, most recently:The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), Imagine a Death (The Operating System, 2021), and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022). She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the concept of han in Korean culture, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She combines shamanic and energetic healing with plant & animal medicine and teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing, and writing. She is Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy and Co-Founder of The Accomplices LLC. She currently lives in Portland, where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University. She can be found online at http://janicel.com.

Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to America in 1990. She is a feminist writer and painter living in Portland with her two children. Shalmiyev’s work has appeared in Literary Hub, Guernica, Electric Lit, LARB, The Rumpus, Vela, Portland Review and other publications. She teaches creative writing at PNCA and PSU. Her first book, Mother Winter, is out in paperback.

Leni Zumas is the author of Red Clocks, Farewell Navigator: Stories, and The Listeners, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Portland State University. Visit her online at lenizumas.com.