The 2015 &Now Literary Festival is happening this week at CalArts in Valencia, CA (March 25-28, 2015).
&Now is a biennial literary festival known for presenting cutting edge writing practices, thinking about writing, and interdisciplinary explorations such as performances and electronic and multimedia projects. In addition to presenting new work, panels and readings foster conversation about past, present, and future literary concerns and movements. The &Now Festival has been hosted by a succession of universities, including the University of Notre Dame (2004), Lake Forest College (2006), Chapman University (2007), the University at Buffalo (2009), UC San Diego (2011), Université de la Sorbonne, Paris (2012), and most recently, the University of Colorado at Boulder (2013).
And now, CalArts joins the fray. Hosted by the MFA Creative Writing Program in the School of Critical Studies., the three-day conference, titled BLAST RADIUS: WRITING AND THE OTHER ARTS, celebrates writing that explodes the boundaries of visual art, music, filmmaking, and performance to create entirely new artistic forms. Blast Radius is open to the public.
Website:
For all details and more information, check out the official website here. The website offers registration options, information about lodging, transportation, & food, and a live update feed.
Book Fair:
The festival will feature a Book Fair, organized by Insert Blanc Press. More info on the Book Fair.
Press Release:
Download the press release.
Schedule:
For a full and detailed schedule of all official conference panels and events, click here.
Just a few highlighted events:
Rules of the Cosmos: Opening Night Special Event / Wednesday 8PM – 9:15PM
All festival participants + the general public are invited to improvise in a live space and time together. — Red Rover Series (Facebook / Sched)
How to Traffic in Books (And Trace that Traffic) / Thursday 11:30AM – 1PM
Small Press Editorial Practices in Both Californias. Antena proposes to spark a dialogue—or, ideally, a multi-logue—around cross-cultural and cross-language small press work, defining “cross” and “cultural” in extremely broad and non-traditional terms. The panel features representatives from four independent presses—two with ties to Southern California and two with ties to Baja California. — Jen Hofer, John Pluecker, René Castillo, Jessica Ceballos, Chiwan Choi, Gidi Loza, Peter Woods (Sched)
Pataphysical Innovations: A Reading and Discussion with Apostrophe Books / Thursday 2:30PM – 3:45PM
The mantra at Apostrophe is not simply innovation, but pataphysical innovation. This means the philosophy of the absurd, the ecology of hypothetical experience, the science of imaginary solutions. –Mark Tursi, Gina Abelkop, Johannes Goransson, Richard Greenfield, Catherine Meng, Joe Milazzo, Tony Trigilio (Sched)
Divination As Praxis / Thursday 2:30PM – 3:45PM
A roundtable discussion on the use of divinatory practices as related to writing and writing experiments. — Emerson Whitney, Bhanu Kapil, Selah Saterstrom, Mady Schutzman (Sched)
Lyrical Visions: Use of the Image in Contemporary Poetics / Thursday 4PM – 5:15PM
This panel will be a hybrid of critical presentations and creative readings which interrogate the panelists’ and others’ use of art and imagery in their writing, ultimately considering the intersection between poetry and “the image.” — Diana Arterian, Amaranth Borsuk, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Robin Coste Lewis, John Pluecker (Sched)
mØnġreL PôeTiKs / Thursday 8PM – 9:15PM
The text-body without borders, without discernable organs that bleeds into visual media and performance art. The failed body of the migrating text that refuses to stop in its perambulations and involutions. The text that eats itself with cannibal intelligence. — Lara Glenum, Bhanu Kapil, Eunsong Kim, Lucas de Lima, Jennifer Tamayo (Sched)
Occult Geographies / Friday 10-11:15AM
This presentation will explore occult geographies as both concept and artistic practice in its material, theoretical and textual manifestations and valences. — Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Teresa Carmody, Andrea Quaid (Sched)
Transconceptualisms / Transconceptualismos: Emergent Poetics in Spanish / Friday 10-11:15AM
The proposal will consist in the reading of the works of four experimental Spanish speaking writers shedding light upon the context of global conceptualisms. — Marco Antonio Huerta, Román Luján, Hugo García Manríquez, Sara Uribe (Sched)
Resonances & Repetitions: Poetic Reverie and Space / Friday 11:30AM – 1PM
This panel will explore literary practices that revolve around changing sensory capacities and spatial resonances, and consider both the written text and literary practice as a materiality that concretely affects and changes the body and atmosphere. — Janice Lee, Amanda Ackerman, Sueyuen Juliette Lee, Shoshana Seidman, Laura Vena (Sched)
ENTER>text: Shore / Friday 5:30 – 7:30PM
A fleeting encounter organized by Enter>text, a living literary journal. Directed by Henry Hoke and Marco Franco Di Domenico in collaboration with Saehee Cho and Sam Bloch. (Sched)
Marvelous Trash: Fan Fiction and Conceptualism / Saturday 4 – 5:15PM
Inhabiting original texts as open channels, fan fiction is a richly citational and performative genre, sharing much with concepual writing; yet despite these similarities, it remains underconsidered within innovative writing communities. This panel stages an encounter between fan fiction and conceptual writing to the-orize a fanfic conceptualism. — Johannes Goransson, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Joyelle McSweeney, Megan Milks (Sched)
Keynote Speaker: M. NourbeSe Philip / Saturday 8 – 9:15PM
Off-Site Events & Other Local LA Happenings:
Check out the LALitScene Calendar for details on &Now Off-Site Readings and other events happening that weekend!
Highlighted Events:
Claudia Rankine @ USC / Thursday, March 26 4:30 – 6PM
The 85th Day: &Now Offsite @ Poetic Research Bureau / Thursday, March 26 8PM (Facebook)
CLOUDFANGS OUT: &NOW Offsite @ Poetic Research Bureau / Friday, March 27 9PM (Facebook)
The Grand Park Downtown Book Festival w/ Pop-Up Bookstore Organized by Writ Large Press / Saturday, March 28 12 – 5PM (Website)
<3 Post-&Now Salon <3 / Saturday, March 28 9:30PM (Facebook)
YAhora &Now @ Avenue 50 Studio / Sunday, March 29 11AM – 2PM 9:30PM (Facebook)
