Yusef Komunyakaa,
Poet / Creative
Writing
Poet Yusef Komunyakaa is the author
of twelve books of poetry, including
the Pulitzer Prize winning , Neon
Vernacular. He is a Chancellor of
the Academy of Poets and professor at
Princeton University. Critics have compared
Komunyakaa to Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn
Brooks, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Amiri
Baraka, and William Carlos Williams.
The author has acknowledged that his
work has been influenced by these poets,
as well as by Melvin Tolson, Sterling
Brown, Helen Johnson, Margaret Walker,
Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. In
addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Komunyakaa
boasts numerous prestigious awards,
including two Creative Writing Fellowships
from the National Endowment for the
Arts (1981, 1987). Komunyakaa's critical
acclaim, particularly as a "Southern
writer," has garnered him inclusion
in such collections as the Norton
Anthology of Southern Literature
and The Oxford Companion to African
American Literature. Komunyakaa
is the Mohr Visiting Poet in the Creative
Writing Department at Stanford for Fall
2002.
Enrique
Chagoya, Visual
Artist
Enrique received his MA & MFA
at the University of California at
Berkeley. Currently he is the Associate
Professor, Studio Art, Stanford University.
His work focuses on painting, printmaking,
and collage. He states,
"My
artwork is conceptual fusion of opposite
cultural realities that I have experienced
in my lifetime. I integrate diverse
elements: from pre-Columbian mythology,
western religious iconography and
American popular culture. The art
becomes a product of collisions between
historical visions, ancient and modern,
marginal and dominant paradigms --
a thesis and an anti-thesis that end
in a synthesis in the mind of the
viewer. Often, the result is a non-linear
narrative with many possible interpretations.
Depending on the specific concept,
I choose to work with different media:
Painting, Drawing, Print-making, Video-animation
or Installation."
Marc
Bamuthi Joseph,
Spoken Word Artist/Dancer
Since beginning a career in performance
poetry in the Fall of 1998, he has
been a three-time San Francisco Poetry
Grand slam winner, won the 1999 National
Poetry Slam with Team San Francisco,
and founded and continues to host
"Second Sundays", the nation's
largest ongoing monthly spoken word
gathering. He has appeared at the
Fillmore, the Bill Graham Civic Center,
the Alice Arts Center, Theater Artaud,
the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, The
Oakland Museum, The San Francisco
Arts Institute and Center for the
Arts at Yerba Buena, SF. He has also
produced a spoken word CD, "Seeking"
and performs on the CD "185 progress
Drive" (Alternative Tentacles
Records: 2000) with Assata Shakur,
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, bob Marley, and Michael
Franti, I was born with Two Toungues
and other hip hop and spoken word
artists.
Spencer
Nakasako, Documentary
Filmmaker
Spencer has worked in the Southeast
Asian community in the Tenderloin
district of San Francisco for several
years, training at-risk refugee teenagers
in video production. He was also one
of the producers of School Colors,
a documentary about the 1994 Class
at Berkeley High School. He produced
and co-directed a.k.a. Don Bonus
a portrait of a Cambodian family shredded
by the pressures of life in their
adopted country. Nakasako won a national
Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus.
His recent work, Kelly Loves Tony,
a video diary about a Lu Mien teenage
couple growing up too fast and too
soon in Oakland, California, aired
nationally on PBS. Nakasako also wrote
the screenplay and co-directed a feature
film about Hong Kong, Life Is Cheap
. . . but Toilet Paper Is Expensive,
with Wayne Wang. Recently, he was
awarded a fellowship from the Rockefeller
Foundation, and he also taught film
in the Ethnic Studies Department at
the University of California at Berkeley.
Believing that everyone should have
access to the media of video and television
to tell their stories, Spencer Nakasako
will be a resident artists with the
Institute for Diversity in the Arts
at Stanford. In Winter Quarter 2003
he will lead a digital-video workshop
designed to give students the tools
to uncover and share their own stories.
Omar
Ramirez, Muralist
Currently, Omar Ramirez lives in East
Palo Alto and is the instructor for
the East Palo Alto Mural Arts Project,
a project which trains local youth
in mural painting. The artistic vision
of muralist and visual artist Omar
Ramirez stems from a deep appreciation
of sacred space and a fascination
with public art. Born to Mexican immigrants
and raised in East Los Angeles, his
work evolved as a vehicle for relevant
social analysis, education, and to
influence positive change. Like pre-Columbian
artists, his spiritually charged art
is functional, sustaining an evolving
dialogue and social commentary about
the human experience, struggle and
beauty. Omar's work celebrates culture
as a means of empowerment and functions
as a catalyst for self-awareness.
Omar began exploring cross cultural
issues such as identity, hegemony
and individual resistance through
collaborative video, performance,
and painting installations while studying
at the University of California, Irvine.
Initially working with renown muralist
Judy Baca to paint and restore murals
in the Los Angeles vicinity, his artistic
style and political voice emerged
in mural designs of his own creation
while still an undergraduate. His
first mural design was in 1992, an
installation at UC Irvine in response
to the LA Riots following the Rodney
King verdict.
Hafez
Modirzadeh, Jazz
Musician
After
completing graduate degrees in ethnomusicology
from both UCLA and Wesleyan, and since
returning to the Bay Area in 1990,
Hafez has worked with Asian Improv
Arts (performing on woodwinds, ) Other
Minds (as 1997 composer/performer
for his own Chromodal Consort), as
well as the San Francisco Jazz, and
Monterey Jazz, and World Music Festivals.
In 1998, he joined the faculty at
San Francisco State University to
create and co-direct two new programs,
one in World Music and Dance, and
another in Jazz and World Music Studies,
and is currently building a World
Music Resource Center with the San
Francisco World Music Festival to
link master musicians of various traditions
both locally and nationally. He is
the recipient of two NEA Jazz Fellowships--which
resulted in Modirzadeh's composing
one of the first Persian-American
Jazz Suite (The Peoples' Blues, available
on Xdot25, 1996.) and the Aftro-Persion
Jazz Ballet (The Mystery of Sama,
available on Asian Improv Records,
1998).
Rosemary
Catacalos, Poet
/ Creative Writing
Rosemary
Catacalos is the author of two books
of poetry: a hand sewn, fine-letterpress
chapbook, As Long As It Takes
(Iguana Press, St. Louis, 1984) and
a full-length collection, Again
for the First Time (Tooth of Time
Books, Santa Fe, 1984). In 1985, Again
for the First Time received the
Texas Institute of Letters poetry
prize, and later that year Ms. Catacalos
was awarded the Dobie Paisano Fellowship
by the Texas Institute of Letters
and the University of Texas at Austin.
From fall 1989 to spring 1991 she
was a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing
Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University,
where she received the Patricia Smith
Poetry Prize. She received a 1993
National Endowment for the Arts Creative
Writing Fellowship in Poetry.
Francis
Wong, Jazz Musician
and Composer
Francis
Wong has been a performer on the saxophone
and the flute for the past 20 years
and a composer for the past 16 years.
He is currently a Meet The Composer
New Resident in the San Francisco
Bay Area and a recording artist for
Asian Improv Records. He leads the
ensemble Gathering of Ancestors in
addition to directing many special
projects. He is a frequent collaborator
with musicians Tatsu Aoki, Jon Jang,
Elliot Humberto Kavee, William Roper
and with poet/performer Genny Lim.
He has also worked with the late Glenn
Horiuchi, with, Hafez Modirzadeh,
John Tchicai, James Newton, Cecil
Taylor, and Liu Qi-Chao. He has composed
scores for choreographers
Sachiko Nakamura and Pearl Ubungen
and for theater companies San Francisco
Mime Troupe, Thick Description and
A World of Tales. Wong is also active
as a community leader and teacher.
He was a California Arts Council Artist
in Residence 1992-1998 and has been
a lecturer in the San Francisco State
University Music Department and the
American Studies Department at the
University of California at Santa
Cruz. In 2000-2001 he was a Rockefeller
Foundation Next Generation Leadership
Fellow. He is co-founder and Creative
Director of Asian Improv aRts, a 15-year-old
multidisciplinary arts production
company and is the current Executive
Producer of Asian American Jazz/SF,
the longest running jazz festival
in San Francisco. He also serves as
President of Justice
Matters Institute, a SF-based
social justice organization.
Robert
Karimi, Writer
/ Performance Artist
Product of the fusion of Iranian and
Guatamalan parents, and hip-hop, disco,
and punk cultures, Robert Karimi became
a Newark-Californian-bilingual-polisexual
writer/multi-disciplinary performance
artist and a High School poetry teacher.
Robert
states, "my stories strive to
reveal the issues of the hybrid, the
mutant, the individual who sees himself
or herself as a multi-faceted person
even though the rest of mainstream
society wishes to confine them into
tiny objective boxes."
He
has performed his work all over the
nation in bars, nightclubs and universities,
and has shared the stage with the
likes of poets past and present: the
Last Poets, I was Born with Two Tongues,
Lorna Dee Cervantes, and Saul Williams
to name a few. He was a member of
the 1999 National Champion Silicon
Valley Poetry Slam Team. He also has
worked with performance artist Guillermo
Gomez-Peña in the Brown Sheep
Project. Karimi wrote and designed
two works published by Y Que press,
and has been recorded on 3 Cds, including
Calaca Press' Raza Spoken Here 2.
Karimi travels the U.S. performing,
teaching workshops and is currently
developing Poetry Curriculum for secondary
teachers.
Mimi
Chakarova, Documentary
Photographer
Mimi Chakarova received her Bachelor
of Fine Arts in Photography from the
San Francisco Art Institute. She completed
her graduate thesis on living conditions
and human rights in Africa and the
Caribbean in the Visual Studies Department
at UC Berkeley. Mimi Chakarova has
had a collection of solo exhibitions
of her documentary work. Her
photographs remain on display in permanent
collections. This is
her fifth year teaching photography
at UC Berkeley's Graduate School
of Journalism. Chakarova is also currently
teaching "Documenting
Communities" at Stanford University.
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