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October 8, 2003

Media Contact: Patricia Quill, (858) 822-0661

ACCLAIMED NOVELIST JESSICA HAGEDORN
TO SPEAK AT UC SAN DIEGO ON OCTOBER 15

Novelist, poet, multimedia and performance artist, Jessica Hagedorn will read from her work at 4:30 p.m. October 15 at the University of California, San Diego’s Cross-Culture Center. The reading is coordinated through the UCSD Literature Department’s New Writing Series.

According to Michael Upchurch in The New York Times, Hagedorn’s new novel “Dream Jungle scrupulously documents its chosen time and place: the Marcos-controlled Philippines of the 1970’s. But it also, more ambitiously, engages with the unreliability of the reality it depicts.” Upchurch concludes Dream Jungle and Hagedorn’s acclaimed first novel The Dogeaters “stand together like installments in a single panoramic Philippine historical epic, with just the right amount of cheesy delight in pop culture and tacky behavior to keep things from getting too pompous or ponderous.”

Hagedorn’s work crosses over narrowly defined racial categories and embraces African-American, Latino, and Asian traditions. Her early forays into poetry, playwriting and short fiction, gave way in the late-1970s to multimedia work. Her experience as a lyricist for a band, as well as her efforts as a playwright and musician, stamped her poetry with distinctively rhythmic and performative strains.

A collaboration with Thulani Davis and Ntozake Shange, Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon (1977) was produced by New York’s Public Theater Director Joseph Papp, who went on to produce Hagedorn’s first play, Mango Tango, in 1978. Hagedorn also made her debut as a screenwriter in 1996 with Wasteland.

Described by poet and writer Ishmael Reed as a “vanguard artist,” Hagedorn is perhaps best known for her novel The Dogeaters, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her play “Dogeaters” had its premier at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1998. Born and raised in the Philippines, Hagedorn moved to the United States in her teens. Her work was included in anthologies in 1973 and her first collection of poetry and fiction, Dangerous Music, was published in 1975. Hagedorn’s other works include Music for Gangsters and (Other) Chameleons; Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth (1999); Burning Heart: A Portrait of the Philippines (with Marissa Roth) (1999); The Gangster of Love (1996); Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction (editor) (1993); The Open Boat: Poems From Asian America (1993), Danger and Beauty (1993); Dangerous Music (1975); Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions (1975); and Chiquita Banana (1972).

Presenting readings of work by over 15 new writers each year, UCSD’s New Writing Series is sponsored by UCSD’s Department of Literature, the University Events Office, the Division of Arts and Humanities and the Archive for New Poetry. Hagedorn’s reading is co-sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (CSRE), and the Cross-Cultural Center. For more information about the New Writing Series go to http://literature.ucsd.edu/news/2003/octnews.html

The media is invited to a pre-event reception for the artist at 3:30 p.m., immediately followed by the reading at 4:30 p.m.

Hagedorn will also read at 7:00 p.m. at the Mira Mesa Library located at 8405 New Salem at the intersection of New Salem and Camino Ruiz, one block north of Mira Mesa Blvd.