Anna Joy Springer

Anna Joy Springer is an American author, visual artist, feminist punk performer, and an Associate Professor of Writing at University of California, San Diego,[1] where she directs its Master of Fine Arts program.[2] Springer is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award (2010) and the Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Award for Visual Arts and Performance (2013).[3]

Biography

Springer spent her early years in Merced, California where her family raised birds.[4] Springer attended school in the San Francisco Bay Area and was friends with Kathy Acker.[5] She entered the punk scene and was a singer for the bands Blatz,[6] The Gr'ups, and Cypher in the Snow,[7] touring the US and Europe.[8][9] Springer has also toured with the feminist spoken-word collective Sister Spit.[9][10]

Springer earned her MFA in literary arts from Brown University in 2002. Characterized as an "ex-punk Buddhist dyke writer of cross-genre works",[7] she is known for her work in experimental literature,[5] including the books The Vicious Red Relic, Love (2011)[11] and The Birdwisher (2009).[12] In The Vicious Red Relic, Love, Springer's protagonist fashions a creature to go back in time to be with her first lover as she commits suicide. In a review for The Journal, Janis Butler Holm describes the book as postmodern and writes that it "prompts us to consider how cultures have taught us to express—and to suppress—our love, our sexuality, our grief."[13]

References

  1. "Anna Joy Springer". UCSD Dept. of Literature. UCSD. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  2. "Writing Now Reading Series: Anna Joy Springer". California Institute of the Arts. 4 December 2014. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  3. "Bard MAT in Los Angeles presents Anna Joy Springer". Poets & Writers. 2015. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  4. "Anna Joy Springer". Joyland Magazine. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Rowe, Peter. "Her writing career isn't by the book". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  6. Savage, Emily (November 15, 2011). "XX hardcore". San Francisco Bay Guardian.
  7. 7.0 7.1 Boulware, Jack; Tudor, Silke (29 September 2009). Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day. New York: Penguin Publishing Group. pp. 410–. ISBN 978-1-101-14500-5.
  8. "Lenelle Moïse and Anna Joy Springer". Claremont Colleges. Retrieved 14 March 2015.
  9. 9.0 9.1 Oakley, Annie, ed. (2007). Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press. p. 297. ISBN 1580052258.
  10. "Anna Joy Springer; O Berkley, Where Art Thou?, and James Skalman". San Diego CityBeat. September 19, 2012.
  11. "The Vicious Red Relic, Love". Jaded Ibis Productions. Jaded Ibis Productions. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  12. "Books". Birds of Lace. Birds of Lace. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
  13. Holm, Janis Butler (Spring 2014). "Review of The Vicious Red Relic, Love by Anna Joy Springer". The Journal (Ohio State University) 38 (2).

External links