Readings: June 14, 2014, 3:00pm – 4:30pm

Book signing immediately following the reading and Q & A.

Books for sale by the Mixed Remixed Festival Official Bookseller Skylight Books.

Krista Bremer

Krista Bremer’s writing has won a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a North Carolina Arts Fellowship. Krista’s essays have appeared in magazines like O, The Oprah Magazine, MORE, The Sun, Utne, and The Sunday Times (London). Her work has also appeared on CNN and MSN, and she is a regular contributor to National Public Radio.

Krista lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, and works as associate publisher of The Sun. Her memoir about her bicultural marriage, My Accident Jihad (Algonquin Books), has met great critical acclaim. Eat, Pray, Love bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert calls My Accidental Jihad “a bold piece of writing (and thinking) by an incredibly brave woman.”

Crystal Chan

Crystal Chan grew up as a mixed-race kid in the middle of the Wisconsin cornfields and has been trying to find her place in the world ever since. Over time, she found that her heart lies in public speaking, performing, and ultimately, writing. She has published articles in several magazines; given talks and workshops across the country; facilitated discussion groups at national conferences; and been a professional storyteller for children and adults alike.

In Chicago, where Crystal now lives, you will find her biking along the city streets and talking to her pet turtle. Her debut middle-grade novel, Bird, is published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers. She is represented by Emily van Beek of Folio Literary Management. Visit her website for more information.

Chris Terry

Chris L. Terry recently relocated to L.A. from Chicago, where he got a Creative Writing MFA from Columbia College. Slate and Kirkus included his novel, Zero Fade, (Curbside Splendor, 2013), on their Best of 2013 lists. Kirkus called it, “Original, hilarious, thought-provoking and wicked smart: not to be missed.” ChrisLTerry.com has links to more of his writing.

Brannon Rockwell-Charland

Brannon Rockwell-Charland is a multimedia artist originally hailing from Berkeley, California. She recently graduated from Oberlin College where she majored in Africana Studies and Visual Art. She is a Mellon-Mays Research Fellow whose scholarship deals with historical mixed-race media representation, race in contemporary advertising, and post-racialism. Much of her artistic work focuses on visual intersections of queerness, blackness, gender, legacy, autobiography, and mythology. Her photographic and sculptural work has been shown at the Lansing Art Gallery in Lansing, Michigan and at the Edmonia Lewis Center for Women and Transgender People in Oberlin, Ohio. In her spare time, she enjoys stream of consciousness writing, playing the guitar, singing, and mixing lipstick colors to find the perfect shade. She was probably a mermaid in a past life. Visit her website for more information.

Shannon Luders-Manuel

Shannon Luders-Manuel is a native of the Bay Area in central California and lived her first two years on San Francisco’s famously diverse Haight Street with her black father from Missouri and white mother from Marin County, California. She received her Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she focused on identity formation and the role of the white suitor in the “tragic mulatta” narrative. Shannon was a founding member of the all-inclusive Meetup group “Sisters and White Misters” located in Alameda, California, and is proud of her multiracial extended family which includes spouses and partners with ethnicities from around the globe. Shannon’s previous literary works include a postcolonial analysis of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case in Vanderbilt University’s online academic journal, AmeriQuests. She is currently working on a memoir entitled Hambone about her relationship with her deceased father.

http://shannonluders.blogspot.com

http://mestizareviews.blogspot.com

Host

Janet Stickmon

Prof. Janet C. Mendoza Stickmon, author of Midnight Peaches, Two O’clock Patience and Crushing Soft Rubies, is a teacher, writer, and performer. Stickmon has taught ethnic studies, social justice, history of Christianity, spoken word and algebra at Salesian High School in Richmond, CA for several years. She is currently a professor of Humanities at Napa Valley College, teaching Filipina/o-American Heritage, American Mind I and II, and Intro to Africana Studies. In addition to developing new ethnic studies curriculum over the past seven years, Prof. Stickmon is also leading a collaborative effort between the Humanities Department faculty and the Associated Students of Napa Valley College to open a cultural institute on campus in 2014.

Stickmon is the founder and facilitator of Broken Shackle Developmental Training—a program that promotes the use of healing techniques to help reduce the effects of internalized racism and has done workshops for women’s resource centers and conferences in the Bay Area. As a member of the Napa Valley Ethnic Studies Advocates, Stickmon delivers collaborative presentations with students, encouraging the integration of ethnic studies into the K-12 curriculum

Janet Stickmon’s memoir, Crushing Soft Rubies, has been used as a course textbook at U.C. Berkeley, San Francisco State University, Santa Rosa Junior College and Gavilan College. She is also a spoken word artist who has performed at several venues across the country. Through her literature and performances, she explores issues of love, motherhood, resilience, ancestral connection, and joy. Her latest book, Midnight Peaches, Two O’clock Patience is a collection of essays, poems, and short stories on the many dimensions of self-love. The text serves as a self-help book for women and men interested in tapping into the sacred feminine to explore issues of spirituality, ethnic identity, sexual freedom, self-care, and motherhood. Midnight Peaches, Two O’clock Patience has been used as a course textbook in colleges, universities and high schools. One of most well-known selections from this text is entitled, “Blackapina” and was featured in Positively Filipino magazine.
Stickmon holds a Master’s of the Arts Degree in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, a Master’s of the Arts Degree in Religion and Society from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. Her work has influenced thousands of adults and adolescents for the last eighteen years.