The Poetic Research Bureau presents Sesshu Foster, Kenji Liu and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo on Saturday, June 2, at 8 p.m. (doors open at 7:30 p.m.) at 951 Chung King Rd. in Los Angeles.
Poet, teacher, and community activist Sesshu Fostergrew up in in East Los Angeles. He earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and returned to L.A. to continue teaching, writing, and community organizing. He is the author of the poetry collections “City Terrace Field Manual” (Kaya Press), “World Ball Notebook” (City Lights Press) and a new collection, “City of the Future” (May 2018). He is also the author of speculative fiction “Atomik Aztex” (City Lights Press), which won the Believer Book Award and imagines an America free of European colonizers.
Foster has taught in East L.A. for 25 years as well as at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Pomona University, and UC Santa Cruz. He lives in Los Angeles.
Kenji C. Liuis the author of “Monsters I Have Been,” forthcoming from Alice James Press (2019), and “Map of an Onion,” national winner of the 2015 Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize. His poetry is in American Poetry Review, Action Yes!, Split This Rock’spoem of the week series, numerous anthologies, and two chapbooks, “Craters: A Field Guide” (2017) and “You Left Without Your Shoes” (2009).
A Kundiman fellow and an alumnus of VONA/Voices, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the Community of Writers, he lives in Los Angeles.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a first-generation Chicana, is the author of “Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge” (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation and Poetry Foundation. Her work is published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and American Poetry Review, among others.
A dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Jesús Salvador Trevi?o, can be viewed at http://latinopia.com. She is a cofounder of Women Who Submit and a member of Macondo Writers’ Workshop.
The Poetic Research Bureau seeks to provide forums for independent and extradisciplinary research, expand the definition and scope of literature, and promote the creative commons and public domain through nonprofit publishing, presentational and pedagogical activities. For more information, visit www.poeticresearch.com.