JUNE 3 - AUG 19

Kearny Street Workshop, in collaboration with Asian Art Museum, presented Interdisciplinary Writers Lab (IWL), a 3-month, multi-genre master class for local writers of color scheduled during summer 2017. IWL is a unique program that challenges emerging writers to thoroughly explore and develop their writing skills and styles across multiple genres.

The goals of the IWL program include: providing local emerging writers/artists with the opportunity to challenge, develop, and expand their practice by working with established writers in a variety of genres; to contribute to the development of new literary forms and language that incorporate multiple forms of creative expression; to provide emerging artists with the opportunity to build community and connect with writers in the literary world; and to publish in a print anthology that highlights work by exciting new writers committed to exploring new forms and voices.

IWL 2017 is a collaboration between Kearny Street Workshop and Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.

IWL Instructors

Paul Flores

Poet, performance artist, playwright, and spoken word artist Paul S. Flores explores the intersection of urban culture, Hip-Hop, and transnational identity rooted in his growing up in both Chula Vista, CA and Tijuana, Mexico. His theater works include the play On The Hill: I AM ALEX NIETO (2016), PLACAS: The Most Dangerous Tattoo (2012), a bilingual tale of fathers and sons, transformation and redemption; the solo performance You’re Gonna Cry (2011); and the two-hander REPRESENTA! (2007). He is a 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award winner, 2014 KQED Hispanic Heritage Local Hero, and 2011 San Francisco Weekly Best Politically Active Hip-Hop Performance Artist. Support for his work also includes the 2016 Gerbode, Hewlett Foundation Theater Commission Award, National Performance Network Forth Fund Award (2014) and NPN Creation Fund (2012), an NEA Theater grant (2013), and a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Fund for the Arts Individual Artist Award (2015). He teaches Hip-Hop Theater and Spoken Word at University of San Francisco.

Arisa White

Cave Canem fellow Arisa White received her MFA from UMass, Amherst, and is the author of Black Pearl, Post Pardon, Hurrah’s Nest, and A Penny Saved. She teaches in the low-residency BFA program at Goddard College, is on the board of directors for Nomadic Press and is a distinguished visiting writer in residence at Saint Mary’s College of California for Spring 2017. You’re the Most Beautiful Thing that Happened is her newest collection from Augury Books.

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

Author of the memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember, from Ecco / Harper Collins. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Zyzzyva, Guernica, The Rumpus, The New York Times, and BuzzFeed, among other publications. Born in New York City, Christine earned her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and her MFA at Mills College. Her novel, The Golem of Seoul, is forthcoming from Ecco / Harper Collins.