During the event, participants will learn anti-racist practices that can be used in writing classrooms and creative spaces across disciplines; participants will also have an opportunity to workshop their own writing. As such, participants should bring some writing to share (sharing will be optional). To prepare, please read the Introduction to Chavez’s book. This event is for staff and faculty.

Chavez’s visit extends from her book The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom, a captivating mix of memoir and progressive teaching strategies. As the publisher states: “This easy-to-use guide explains how to recruit, nourish, and fortify writers of color through innovative reading, writing, workshop, critique, and assessment strategies.

Biography

Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom and co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT with Willie Perdomo and José Olivarez. Chavez served as Program Director to Young Chicago Authors and founded GirlSpeak, a literary webzine for young women. She went on to teach writing at the University of New Mexico, where she was distinguished as the Most Innovative Instructor of the Year, the University of Iowa, where she was distinguished as the Outstanding Instructor of the Year, and Colorado College, where she received the Theodore Roosevelt Collins Outstanding Faculty Award. Her creative scholarship earned her a Ronald E. McNair Fellowship, a University of Iowa Graduate Dean’s Fellowship, a Riley Scholar Fellowship, and a Hadley Creatives Fellowship. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Felicia currently serves as Scholar-in-Residence in Creativity and Innovation at Colorado College. Learn more about the anti-racist workshop model here: https://www.antiracistworkshop.com/.

This event is sponsored by the Robert and Mabel Groseclose Endowed Lecture Fund, the Visiting Writers Reading Series, and the First Year Seminar through the Judd D. Kimball Endowment in the Classics.