“The Craft and Career of Activist Writing” with John Curl on April 16th, 2023

If your basic inspiration as a writer is to change the world in positive ways, you are an activist writer. Since writing springs from every aspect of a person’s life, an activist writer needs broad experiences, in work life and personal life. Activist writers need to be creative to find venues for their writing and to find ways to connect with their natural audiences. Since this kind of writing rarely generates an adequate income, most activist writers also need another source of income. Sharing the work experience of working people, creates rich materials for writing. Activist writing includes some of the most important literature in the world. __________________________________ John Curl is an activist writer of poetry, fiction, history, essays and memoirs. The author of twelve poetry collections, his latest is Rainbow Weather, Poems for Environmental Healing, published by Vagabond Books. (2022). His translations of ancient Inca, Maya, and Aztec poets are collected in Ancient American Poets (Bilingual Press). He is the author of two novels, a memoir of the 1960s (Memories of Drop City), and a history of cooperation, For All The People (PM Press). A co-founder of Indigenous Peoples Day, he is the author of a documentary history and memoir of how the new holiday replaced Columbus Day. He is a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco and a long-time co-editor of their annual poetry anthologies with San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus Jack Hirschman, who wrote, “John Curl has earned a place among the foremost revolutionary American poets since the end of WW2.” He represented the USA at the World Poetry Festival in Venezuela in 2010, where he read with Nobel laureate poet Derek Walcott.

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