Poet, novelist and Native American scholar N. Scott Momaday has spent decades bringing his culture and the landscape alive through his writing.  He received a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "House Made of Dawn." His books include "The Way to Rainy Mountain," "In the Bear's House," "In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991," and "The Gourd Dancer." He is also the editor of various anthologies and collections centered on his Kiowa heritage. As part of the Writer's Symposium By the Sea, host Dean Nelson sat down with Momaday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to talk about his life in literature. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 38122]

A Conversation with N. Scott Momaday - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2023

Our series of artists and educators connecting arts and humanities to medicine continues continues with Thomas Dooley, poet-in-residence at the Center for Compassionate Communication at UC San Diego's Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. Series: "Let's Jam: The Arts in Medicine" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 37987]

Let's Jam: Poet Thomas Dooley

Alice Walker

An internationally celebrated American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist, Walker's work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than fifteen million copies. She wrote The Color Purple, for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Walker's collected work includes poetry, novels, short fiction, essays, critical essays, and children's stories.  She was the recipient of a Rosenthal Foundation award and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award for In Love and Trouble. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 35143]

An Evening with Alice Walker - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2020

Should your art send you to prison? Rap lyrics are increasingly turning up as evidence in courtrooms across the country. The fictional characters portrayed in violent gansta rap songs are often a far cry from the true personalities of the artists behind them, yet uninitiated audiences easily conflate artist with character and fiction with fact. On a broader scale, using rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases also raises questions about artistic freedom, freedom of speech and the rights of all citizens to receive a fair trial. UC Irvines Charis E. Kubrin, Ph.D and Adam Dunbar explore these issues.  Series: "Zot Talks" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 31368]

Rap on Trial: Is it a Crime to Rhyme?

Emmanuel Jal

Emmanuel Jal, an internationally recognized hip-hop musician, former child soldier turned activist and entrepreneur, shares his story and music. Jal was born into the life of a child solider in the early 1980s in the war-torn region of Southern Sudan. He calls upon all of us to engage with our world and become global citizens through scholarship, leadership and service. [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 33490]

From War Child to Global Citizen with Emmanuel Jal

Yusef Komunyakaa

Simon Raab

Yusef Komunyakaa, an internationally renowned poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for “Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems," reads and discusses his work while writer-in-residence at UC Santa Barbara.  Series: "Voices" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 32148]

Yusef Komunyakaa - The 2017 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-in-Residence

Robert Pinsky

Point Loma Writer

Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky describes himself as a "composer" who considers poetry to be first and foremost a vocal art, and his work seeks to blur the distinctions between language and music by emphasizing the rhythms and innate physicality of recited verse in a jazz context.  In this performance for the 22nd Writer's Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University, Pinsky's reading is accompanied by a talented trio of PLNU students.  The music - a blend of rehearsed and improvised - employs a variety of jazz styles, sometimes sympathetic and sometimes in playful counterpoint, but always responsive to the poet's distinctive voice. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 30820]

An Evening with Robert Pinsky - Point Loma Writer’s Symposium by the Sea 2017

UC Berkeley professors, Robert and Sally Goldman, led the 40-year project to translate the Sanskrit epic poem Valmiki Ramayana to modern English.  Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31985]

Famous Ramayana Epic Now in Modern English

David Kim

Sunni Patterson

New Orleans native Sunni Patterson is an internationally-known Def poetry artist and activist. She is joined in a conversation with George Lipsitz and David Kim about her music and poetry, and her life reaching, teaching and healing. Series: "Voices" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31570]

Resilient Love in a Time of Hate: A Discussion with David Kim and Sunni Patterson

New Orleans native Sunni Patterson powerfully recites one of her many poems. Series: "Voices" [Humanities] [Show ID: 31630]

Potent Poet Sunni Patterson

UCTV's impressive archive of poetry readings, interviews and conversations with established and emerging poets is the perfect resource to bring the art of language to life.

Poetry (Audio)

Cathy Park Hong's first book, Translating Mo'um, was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Dance Dance Revolution, her second collection, received the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her third and most recent book of poems, Engine Empire, was published in May, 2012. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn and is an Associate Professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 24349]

Cathy Park Hong - Lunch Poems

Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera presents recent works before attendees of the Global Food Systems Forum and ANR Statewide Conference at Ontario, California. Series: "University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 25742]

California's Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera

Robin Blaser

Robin Blaser emerged from the Berkeley Renaissance of the 1940s and ‘50s along with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, and later established himself as one of Canada’s foremost experimental poets. In addition to numerous works of poetry, criticism, and translation, Blaser has also penned an English and Latin opera libretto entitled The Last Supper in collaboration with Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 15429]

Lunch Poems: Robin Blaser

Jessica Fisher

Jessica Fisher’s Frail-Craft was the winner of the prestigious 2006 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. She is a doctoral candidate in English at U.C. Berkeley and is coeditor, with Robert Hass, of The Addison Street Anthology, which chronicles Berkeley’s rich poetic history. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 13565]

Lunch Poems: Jessica Fisher

California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera shares stories and life lessons from his father.  [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 25525]

A Father's Day Tale by Juan Felipe Herrera 

Dylan Hendricks

UC Berkeley’s Dylan Hendricks reads “I Carry Your Heart With Me” by E. E. Cummings. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 27819]

Lunch Poems: Dylan Hendricks (Excerpt)

Zubair Ahmed was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2005, his family won the Diversity Visa Lottery, which granted them the opportunity to immigrate to the US. During the year-and-a-half before moving, he became a professional video gamer and then moved to Duncanville, Texas where he finished high school. Ahmed now studies mechanical engineering and creative writing at Stanford University. He is a member of the Stanford Solar Car Team, president of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors Society, and has recently delved into business and startups. City of Rivers, published by McSweeney’s, is his highly praised debut collection of poems. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 27725]

Zubair Ahmed - Lunch Poems

Award winning writer and poet C. S. Giscombe has written many poems, books, and plays.  He was the 2010 recipient of the Stephen Henderson Award given by the African American Literature and Culture Society. His poetry book Prairie Style won a 2008 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Two of his recent plays (Lycanthropes/ Entre Chien et Loup and Lycanthropes/ Loup-Garou!) have been produced in San Francisco. Back Burner, a collection of essays about poetry, color, transportation, cooking, etc., will be published in 2013. He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 24351]

C.S. Giscombe - Lunch Poems

Zeyar Lynn

This reading is a special event celebrating the first anthology of Burmese poetry in English translation in more than fifty years. At a time of political transformation in Myanmar, Zeyar Lynn, poet, essayist, and translator presents his work from “Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets.” Lynn is widely regarded as the most influential living poet in Myanmar and a translator of many Western poets, including Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, and Charles Bernstein. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 25925]

Zeyar Lynn - Lunch Poems

Linda Gregerson

Linda Gregerson is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Selvage (2012). Her many honors include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations, the Kingsley Tufts poetry endowment. Her third book, Waterborne, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Gregerson is Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan. She reads to an audience at UC Berkeley. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 27967]

Linda Gregerson - Lunch Poems

Keith P. Feldman

UC Berkeley assistant professor Keith P. Feldman reads from Mahmoud Darwish’s “Memory for Forgetfulness”. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 27814]

Lunch Poems: Keith P. Feldman (Excerpt)

Cynthia Cruz

Cynthia Cruz’s poems have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review and others. Her first collection of poems, RUIN, was published by Alice James Book and her second collection, “The Glimmering Room,” was published by Four Way Books in 2012. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. Her third collection of poems, Wunderkammer, is from Four Way Books in 2014. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 26024]

Cynthia Cruz - Lunch Poems

Poet, editor, and scholar Juliana Spahr discusses her writing and research.  Series: "The Center for Cultural Studies at UC Santa Cruz presents" [Humanities] [Show ID: 15001]

The 90s

Nikki Giovanni

Poet Nikki Giovanni reads a selection of her poems as part of the 2016 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University.   Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 30819]

The Poems of Nikki Giovanni -- Point Loma Writer’s Symposium by the Sea 2016

Author, spoken word artist, poet, essayist, professor, Nikki Giovanni has been electrifying audiences for more than 40 years, earning her one of Oprah Winfrey’s Living Legends distinctions.  She delivers here as well, with a passionate and engaging performance and interview with host Dean Nelson of Point Loma Nazarene University.   Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 29674]

An Evening with Nikki Giovanni -- Point Loma Writer’s Symposium by the Sea  2016

One of the year’s most lively events, the student reading includes winners of the following prizes: Academy of American Poets, Cook, Rosenberg, and Yang, as well as students nominated by Berkeley’s creative writing faculty, Lunch Poems volunteers, and representatives from student publications. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29740]

Lunch Poems: 2015 Student Reading

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield's eighth poetry book, The Beauty, appears from Knopf in early 2015, along with a new book of essays, Ten Windows. Previous books include Come, Thief (Knopf, 2011) and After (2006), named a best book of the year by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Financial Times (UK). She has also written a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and edited and co-translated four books of work by world poets of the past. Her honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, finalist selection for the National Book Critics Circle Award, England's T. S. Eliot Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A frequent presenter at universities and literary festivals both in the US and abroad, in 2012 she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Show ID: 29540]

Jane Hirshfield - Lunch Poems

Joshua Weiner

Joshua Weiner is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish (2013). He is also the editor of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn, and the poetry editor at Tikkun magazine. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2014 fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. A professor of English at the University of Maryland, he lives with his family in Washington DC. Series: "Lunch Poems Reading Series" [Humanities] [Arts and Music] [Show ID: 29365]

Joshua Weiner - Lunch Poems

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