The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
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Conference Schedule 2019

Conference Schedule 2019

Saturday, February 23, 2019, 1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.

Interrogating Empathy with Jabari Jawan Allen, Maritza N. Estrada, Joel Salcido, Elliot Rose Winter

Date(s): Saturday, February 23, 2019, 1:45 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
Location: Tooker, Old Main (view map)
Type(s): Panel
Genre and Form(s): Community, Pedagogy, Poetry
Tags: The Body, Other, Empathy, Trauma, Whiteness, Intersectionality

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About the Session

Join four poets/ writers as they discuss the merits and shortcomings of the concept of empathy. These poets will focus on empathy as it functions in creative writing, pedagogy, performance, and currency to interrogate how these aspects affect othered bodies. How does the idea of empathy create a market for trauma? How are the performances of traumas used to placate the white gaze? Can there be new possibilities to describe and employ an empathy that is active and engaged in works, rather than the passive "feeling" of empathy that often functions only to benefit the empathizer? What wonders can we produce as a community, mindful of intersectionality, to explore the conditions that create the need for empathy and redirect them in ways that provide space for othered bodies, that provide means for which to alleviate the need for facile, inactive empathy?

Meet the Presenter(s)

Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference Fellow 2019 Jabari Jawan Allen


Jabari Jawan Allen

Jabari Jawan Allen is a Chicago, IL native. A 2018 Tin House Winter Workshop Scholar and 2018 Lucille Clifton Memorial Scholar, Allen has received fellowships from Tin House, Community of Writers, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and VONA. Allen’s poems either appear or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Vinyl, Four Chambers, and elsewhere. Allen currently lives in Phoenix, AZ.


Learn more about Jabari Jawan Allen

Photograph of Martiza Estrada


Maritza N Estrada

Maritza N. Estrada is a first-year MFA student in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. She is the recipient of the 2019 Virginia G. Piper Creative Research Fellowship, winner of the Mabelle A. Lyon Poetry Award, and recently participated in Winter Tangerine's workshop at Poet's House. Her work can be found in Río Grande Review, The Flat Waters Stirs: An Anthology of Emerging Nebraska Poets, Misbehaving Nebraskans Anthology, and 13th Floor Magazine. Estrada was born in Washington, raised in Nebraska, and is marking residencia in Arizona


Learn more about Maritza N Estrada

Photograph of Joel Salcido wearing a pigeon mask


Joel Salcido

Joel Salcido was born in the San Fernando Valley and raised in West Phoenix. He is the son of Mexican immigrants, a first-generation college graduate, a husband, and father of three sons. Salcido characterizes his work as hood magical realism—a navigation between the grief & ecstasy of place & experience. His poetry and prose are not simply written to or about his culture and community—but from it. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in [PANK] Magazine, Winter Tangerine, YesPoetry, PidgeonHoles, Write On: Downtown, Public Pool, and Acentos Review among others. He is the recipient of a Virginia G. Piper Creative Research Fellowship and a Winter Tangerine workshop alum. Salcido holds an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University. 


Learn more about Joel Salcido

Photograph of Elliot Rose Winter


Elliot Rose Winter

Elliot Rose Winter is a queer, trans, nonbinary poet originally from New Jersey, currently living in Tempe, AZ. They are an MFA candidate at Arizona State University, and a recipient of a Fellowship from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. 


Learn more about Elliot Rose Winter