Castro co-edits special issue of BREVITY on Race, Racism and Racialization

Joy Castro has long been interested in the place where creative writing intersects with issues of race, ethnicity, and social justice. The author and professor currently serves as the Director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies and has written essays on race for Gulf Coast and Salon, among others. This spring, she was asked to co-edit a special issue of Brevity on race, racism, and racialization, which was released last week.

Brevity is a journal of concise literary nonfiction that showcases "flash essays" of 750 words or less. The Race, Racism, and Racialization Special Issue (Issue 53/Fall 2016) was guest-edited by Joy Castro and Ira Sukrungruang and features essays reporting and examining lived experiences at the intersections of race, gender, class, dis/ability, and language. Among the featured essays are four by alumni of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Creative Writing program: "Black in Middle America" by Roxane Gay, "What You Are" by Katelyn Hemmeke, "White Like Us" by Jacob Hilton, and "Mexican Americans and American Mexicans: An Etymology" by Sarah A. Chavez.

Castro herself has written for Brevity in the past, reflecting on the privilege of having time and space for writing in her essay "On Length in Literature." "I like the way compression and short forms are more possible, more available, for writers in straitened circumstances," Castro writes in her craft essay with co-editor Ira Sukrungruang. "Since generally in our culture race, ethnicity, and class remain intertwined, we need to think hard about measuring writers by the quantity of their output."

The full issue is available at Brevitymag.com.

--

Joy Castro is the author of two literary thrillers, two memoirs, and the short-story collection How Winter Began, and the editor of Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family. She teaches creative writing, Latino studies, and literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she currently directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies.

Ira Sukrungruang is the author of the short story collection, The Melting Season; two books of nonfiction, Southside Buddhist and Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, and the poetry collection, In Thailand It Is Night. He teaches at the University of South Florida and edits Sweet: A Literary Confection.

Roxane Gay's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, West Branch, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Rumpus, Salon, and many others. She is also the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, and Hunger, forthcoming from Harper. She holds an M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an emphasis in Creative Writing.

Sarah A. Chavez is the author of the poetry collections, All Day, Talking and Hands That Break & Scar (forthcoming 2017). Her work can be found or is forthcoming in VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, The Boiler Journal, White Stag, Connotation Press, and THEThe Poetry Blog, among others. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching Ethnic American literature and creative writing at Marshall University, as well as acting coordinator for the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series. She is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in English with a focus in poetry and Ethnic Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Katelyn Hemmeke is a 2016-2017 Fulbright Junior Researcher in Seoul, South Korea. Her research and writing has focused on the ways that Korean transnational adoptees use literature, film, and activism to subvert dominant adoption narrative themes such as child rescue, "unfit" mothers, and the priority of adoptive parents' privileges over adoptee and birth mother rights. She holds an M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Jacob Hilton was born and raised in Central Illinois. Formerly the assistant editor of the Eureka Literary Magazine, he currently teaches English at Eureka College. He holds an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

Author bios courtesy of Brevity.