This event will be streamed online as a part of our P&P Live! Series
In this conversation, our panelists will discuss the legacy of the New Deal and their hopes for a New New Deal, with questions like: Can the literary and arts community muster a similar sense of solidarity in the 21st Century? What new forms might a cultural new deal take now? How could we create a more just and inclusive project for artists in the 21st century?
Chiyuma Elliott is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her current scholarly work focuses on poetry and the Harlem Renaissance, including the creative and economic impacts of New Deal policies on rural Black people. A former Stegner Fellow, Chiyuma’s poems have appeared in the African American Review, Callaloo, the Notre Dame Review, the PN Review, and other journals. She has received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, Cave Canem, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the author of three books of poetry: At Most (2020), Vigil (2017), and California Winter League (2015). Her fourth poetry collection, Blue in Green, is forthcoming in fall of 2021 from the University of Chicago Press.
Jason Boog is a journalist and the author of The Deep End: The Literary Scene in the Great Depression and Today. His writing has appeared at LitHub, The Believer, Salon, NPR Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Publishers Weekly. He is part of the editorial team at the social reading app, Fable.
For five years the NEA’s Director of Literature, David Kipen has introduced reissues of WPA Guides to California, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. His other books include Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542-2018 and, soon, Dear California. A frequent contributor to public radio, he teaches writing full-time at UCLA. In 2010, he founded the nonprofit bilingual storefront lending library Libros Schmibros. His work has appeared in the New York Times, World Policy Journal, Alta, and the Los Angeles Times, where his May 20 feature helped gin up interest in reviving the Federal Writers’ Project.
Tess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Misremembered World, selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship, and The Forage House, called “stunning” by The San Francisco Chronicle. Work & Days was named one of The New York Times best books of poetry of 2016. In spring 2020 she published two books of poems. Last West was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art as a part of the Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures exhibition; Rift Zone, from Red Hen Press, was hailed as “brilliant” in the LA Times and named one of the best books of 2020 by The Boston Globe. She is currently on the faculty of Ashland University’s Low-Res MFA Creative Writing Program.
Matthew-Lee Erlbach is a writer, actor, and labor activist from Chicago and New York. He has written for We Are the Champions and Gypsy (Netflix), Masters of Sex (Showtime), and for WWE, Nickelodeon, and MTV. As a playwright, his work has appeared Off-Bway, regionally, and at Steppenwolf, where his play The Doppelgänger (An International Farce) premiered, starring Rainn Wilson. He has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Laurents/Hatcher Foundation, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Puffin Foundation, was a member of Ars Nova's Play Group, MVMNT Theatre’s Play Group, and is a HUMANITAS New Voices recipient. Beyond his work with Habitat for Humanity and individuals who are homeless, he is a proponent of ethical AI and ethical transhumanism.
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