BIPOC Reading Series – May

Kyle Yoshioka thinks and writes a lot about belonging. He is the founder and editorial director of Provecho, a publication about the intersection of food and identity, and co-hosts the BIPOC Reading Series at Literary Arts. His writing projects have been supported by the Independent Publishing Resource Center, the McCormack Writing Center Workshop (formerly the Tin House Workshop), and the Andy Warhol Foundation's Precipice Fund. Kyle is working on his debut novel about a multigenerational Japanese American family that explores whether inheritance is destiny.

Christian Orellana Bauer (b. Cuenca, Ecuador) is an interdisciplinary poet, visual artist, musician, and filmmaker. They are drawn to buried narratives that reveal the ways in which power operates and provide windows into avenues of resistance when excavated and re-contextualized. Their work explores the in-betweens of globalized systems: the holistic, ethno-relativist, interdisciplinary intersections and junctions of seemingly unrelated narratives and concepts. They work to unearth these connections and learn the ways in which contemporary power creates and manipulates its institutions and conceptual frameworks to construct, maintain, and justify its domination of the social body. They are often trying to balance work with getting distracted by beautiful moments, reading books, playing music for too long, cloud watching, and trying to do nothing from time to time.

Christian graduated with a B.A in Arts and Letters from Portland State University. Their projects have been supported by the Oregon Arts Commission, Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC), the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, as well as their family, friends, and community members always. They have attended residencies at black whole press, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the Vermont Studio Center, and Caldera. Their work has appeared in the RACC’s public works collection, the IPRC's Zine Library, the Oregon City Library, and has exhibited in galleries and events throughout Oregon. They are the author of the chapbook In the Pocket of a Beast and have also been recognized by NPR under stage name Iro and the Moon.