Friday, April 14: Gabrielle Civil, Douglas Kearney & Anna Joy Springer

Join us as we celebrate the release of Gabrielle Civil's memoir Swallow the Fish.

SWALLOW THE FISH
with
Gabrielle Civil
Douglas Kearney
& Anna Joy Springer

Gabrielle Civil’s Swallow the Fish is a memoir in performance art that explores the medium from within its beating heart. Adding its voice to black feminist conversations, it combines essays, anecdotes, and meditations with original performance texts to confront audience, motivation, and fears. Both joy and panic appear in Civil’s world of performance, where neither walls nor city limits set the scope of the stage. Civil bares vulnerabilities and enthralls readers, asking essential questions and embodying dreams.

Doors 7:30pm
Reading 8pm

GABRIELLE CIVIL is a black feminist performance artist, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over 40 original solo and collaborative performance works around the world. Recent works include “…hewn and forged….” at the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (2016); “_______ is the thing with feathers” at “Call & Response: Experiments in Joy” (2014); “Say My Name” (an action for 270 abducted Nigerian girls)” (2014); and “Fugue (Da, Montréal),” at the Hemispheric Institute Encuentro (2014). Her writing has appeared in Small Axe, Obsidian, Asterix, Rain Taxi, and other publications. The aim of her work is to open up space.

DOUGLAS KEARNEY has published six books, most recently, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), of which Amaud Jamaul Johnson writes: “Seriously, a marvel. I recommend entering Buck Studies at midnight, only after listening to Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet on repeat, skimming Pindar, Uncle Remus and the Bible, and eating at least two bowls of Count Chocula.” Kearney’s collection of writing on poetics and performativity, Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” Raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in the Santa Clarita Valley and teaches at CalArts.

ANNA JOY SPRINGER is a queer femme visual artist, performer, and cross-genre writer working with the sacred, perverse, hilarious and threatening. She is the author of The Vicious Red Relic, Love (Jaded Ibis, 2011), an illustrated fabulist memoir with soundscape, and The Birdwisher, A Murder Mystery for Very Old Young Adults (Birds of Lace, 2009). Her other work appears in far-flung print and online publications (ex: The Writer’s Chronicle; Encyclopedia; Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature; Glitter & Grit: Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy; Pank, and The Volta), as well as on several records (Lookout!; Alternative Tentacles). An Associate Professor of Literature at UC San Diego, she teaches experimental writing, feminist literature & graphic texts. She’s played in punk and dyke punk bands Blatz, The Gr’ups, and Cypher in the Snow, touring the U.S. and Europe in these bands and with Sister Spit, a raucous feminist literary performance group. She is the winner of an Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award (2010) and a recipient of UCSD Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Award (2013).