VIDEO + AUDIO In Common Writers Series: Feliz Lucia Molina, reading and in conversation with Alli Warren | The Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives

Thursday, April 11 - 7:00 pm PS to 9:00 pm PST

The Poetry Center, Humanities 512, San Francisco State University

Full program video: Feliz Lucia Molina with Alli Warren: April 11, 2019
Video highlight clips: Feliz Lucia Molina reads "Heterotopia in the Valley," from her manuscript Thundercastle | Feliz Lucia Molina reads "Please Listen to 'I'll Remember' by Madonna While Eating a Salad at Denny's or Sizzler" | Feliz Lucia Molina and Alli Warren talk about including one's home, or not, in one's poetry, with Molina speaking of locating a sense of "feeling at home" on the Internet, as compared to the physical spaces of boarding care homes from her youth

I thought the woman, the woman who asked what my problem was, was not all the way in Manila.

I thought a white woman in Nashville could help too, could help before I connected to the woman so eager to help in Manila.

I know the difference between them is geography and sound.

I know the linking of them is movies and English.[...]

Feliz Lucia Molina, from Undercastle

The Poetry Center's In Common Writers Series continues in April with a double program featuring Feliz Lucia Molina, here from Chicago, reading and conversing with Alli Warren at The Poetry Center. The following evening, Friday April 12, the two of them each read their own work at The Green Arcade in San Francisco. Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, both events are free and open to the public.

Feliz Lucia Molina was born & raised in a Filipino diaspora in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. In the early 1980s to the mid 2000s, her family operated board-and-care homes for adults with emotional and mental health issues and cognitive and physical disabilities. During this time, she was first exposed to this type of care work in the context of a shared home. She is a master's candidate in clinical social work at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. After having trained as a clinical case worker for a housing program in 2017-2018, she is presently training in psychodynamic psychotherapy at a community mental health center in Chicago.

She holds a BA in Writing & Literature and minor in Religious Studies from Naropa University, MFA in Literary Arts (Poetry) from Brown University, and is a PhD (ABD) candidate at European Graduate School. A recipient of poetry fellowships from Kundiman and The MacDowell Colony, she taught poetry at Brown University, Cal State San Marcos, and UC San Diego. She is the author of Undercastle (Magic Helicopter Press), a co-author, with Ben Segal and Brett Zehner, of The Wes Letters (Outpost19), and the chapbook Crystal Marys (Scary Topiary Press). Roulette is forthcoming from Make Now Books. She can be found at felizluciamolina.com

Alli Warren is the author of I Love It Though (Nightboat), which was nominated for the California Book Award. Other recent publications include Little Hill (The Elephants), Moveable C (Push Press), Don’t Go Home With Your Heart On (Faux Press), and Here Come the Warm Jets (City Lights), which was nominated for the California Book Award and won the Poetry Center Book Award. Her writing has been published in many venues, including Harpers, Poetry, Jacket, The Brooklyn Rail, and Feminist Formations. Alli has lived and worked in the Bay Area since 2005.

Related event:

In Common Writers Series

Feliz Lucia Molina and Alli Warren

reading their work

Friday APRIL 12

7:00 pm @ The Green Arcade

1680 Market Street (at Gough), San Francisco

free and open to the public

supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund

In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with, for the most, local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we're doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State's College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area's local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227