AWP 2018 Author History Project: Centenarian Vision – A Literary Study of Time in America

The Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida used to say “one should not forget that future and past are contemporary.” Recognizing that the integration of our worlds, our life rhythms and pulses, is chaotic, violent, emergent, and constantly forming, how do writers in 2018 see through a century?

We are a group of authors from Keep St Pete Lit and Kelsey Street Press investigating how our current realities play on our interpretation of one hundred year old photographs from Tampa Bay and San Francisco Bay–2 port town sites of immigration and industry— framing the United States. We hope to engage reflections on the effects of time on memory, to question the notion of history as an event in the past, and to comment on the resonances between the US coastal boundaries one hundred years ago and today.

Keep St Pete Lit writers:

• Eleanor Eichenbaum – poet and art curator
• Fred Hearns – African American historian
• Tenea Johnson – speculative fiction author
• Gloria Muñoz – poet, women-in-film activist
• Paul Wilborn – Palladium Artistic Director, journalist

Kelsey Street Press writers:

• Ching-In Chen – poet, community organizer
• Amber DiPietra – disability poetics author and advocate
• Sabrina Dalla Valle – experimental author

CENTENARIAN VISION is curated by Sabrina Dalla Valle for Keep St Pete Lit and Kelsey Street Press.

A hand-crafted chapbook of writing and photographs from the project made by Ringling College of Art and Design Letterpress Collective will be available for purchase.