About New Writing Series

UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice. 

The New Writing Series is co-sponsored by the UCSD Department of Literature, UCSD Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Program, and the UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives.

Recordings of New Writing Series readings, as well as its predecessor, the New Poetry Series, which dates back to 1972, are part of the Archive for New Poetry in UC San Diego Library’s Special Collections & Archives.

This New Writing Series event features readings from Julie Patton, Malik Gaines (Visual Arts Department), and Alexandro Segade (Visual Arts Department).

j. Ezelle-Patton’s recent titles include The Flower Poem (Tender Buttons Press, 2024), the forthcoming J Walking thru the Alphabet (Nightboat Books, Winter 2025), and ARKiTEXT (Chicago Review: Vol. 67,  2024), Three-Fold Press, Poetry Magazine, and a forthcoming Fence 43, and Long News Poetry & Poetics.

Ezelle-Patton’s Womb Room Tomb and Let it Bee Ark Hive conservation project continues to agitate for the care of affordable housing, earth and wildlife, and the artistic legacy of Depression-born artists Virgie Ezelle-Patton, Clifton Clay, Theresa Ramey (as they did on behalf of Russell Atkins in the early naughts). A sensibility reflected in "As Land Remembers/Denniston Hill at Marian Goodman Gallery” thru her "Everything There is To Say on Earth & Then Some” flyer; and “Even though Worms” contribution to the forthcoming  ‘In Minor Keys’ White Cube Denniston Hill installation in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia Spring-Fall 2026. ezelle-patton, a recipient of an Acker, NYFA, Doan Brook Watershed Hero, Foundation for Contemporary Art  awards, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Core Resident Fellowship is most at home collaborating in the moment with instrumentalists Nasheet Waits, Ken Filiano, Janice Lowe, Drew Gardner, Andrew Levy; Abou Farman’s Ad Hoc Collective for Improvising Mourning Technologies for Future Grief along with Sholegh Asgary; and Rock Paper Twisted Sisters with Janice Lowe, Paul Van Curen at venues such as Arts for Arts Vision Festival, the Stone and festivals abroad. 

Malik Gaines is Professor of Visual Arts at The University of California, San Diego, where he PhD director. He is the author of Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible (2017, NYU Press) and many essays and articles about art and performance. Gaines performs and exhibits on his own and in multiple collaborations. Since 2000, he has worked with Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade as the group My Barbarian, the subject of a survey at the Whitney Museum, New York and the ICA Los Angeles in 2021-22. Gaines recently served as artistic co-director of The Industry opera company in Los Angeles, which presented his opera Star Choir, about future humans who attempt to colonize a distant planet. His most recent work includes a piano-bar act at San Diego's Clark Cabaret.

San Diego-born interdisciplinary artist and UCSD Associate Professor Alexandro Segade explores speculative identities at the intersection of art, culture, and politics. Segade's recent projects include the sci-fi opera Star Choir, the queer superhero graphic novel The Context, and the performance film Anoche, which premiered at the 15th Havana Biennial and was presented as an installation at Beta Local, Santurce, Puerto Rico. As a co-founder of the collective My Barbarian (est. 2000), Segade uses theatricality and humor as critical methodology, a practice recently honored with a 20-year survey at the Whitney Museum and ICA Los Angeles. My Barbarian's recent exhibition Cat Suit at Lubov Gallery featured Segade's original cat-themed Tarot deck. Segade’s writing has been featured in Artforum and Yale Theater Journal. An alumnus of UCLA, he earned his BA and MFA under the mentorship of Mary Kelly and Andrea Fraser, focusing his career on performance, video, and drawing.

Our events are FREE and open to the public!