We are pleased to announce that Margaret Rhee has joined Les Figues Press as the inaugural Kathy Acker Fellow. The Kathy Acker Fellowship provides a part-time, 9-month appointment for an emerging writer/artist, literary editor, or arts curator/organizer. The Kathy Acker Fellow will learn the ins-and-outs of small press publishing while also completing a curatorial project in the City of West Hollywood.

Margaret Rhee is a feminist poet, new media artist, and scholar. She is the author of poetry chapbooks Yellow (Tinfish Press, 2011) and Radio Hearts, Or How Robots Fall Out of Love (Forthcoming, Finishing Line Press, 2015). She co-edited Here Is A Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets, glitter tongue: queer and trans love poems, and served as managing editor of Mixed Blood, a literary journal on race and innovated poetics edited by C.S. Giscombe. She is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the Squaw Valley Poetry Workshop and Kundiman. As a new media artist, she co-lead and co conceptualized From the Center a feminist HIV/AIDS digital storytelling education project implemented in the San Francisco Jail (www.ourstorysf.org). For this project, she was awarded the Chancellor’s Award in Public Service from UC Berkeley and the Yamashita Prize Honorable Mention for young activists by the Center for Social Change. Her current work is focused on the participatory intersections of poetry, tangible computing, and ethnic feminism: www.kimchipoetryproject.com. Currently, she is the Institute of American Cultures Visiting Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a Ph.D. in ethnic studies and new media studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

As the Kathy Acker Fellow, Margaret will help coordinate Memes/Manifestos, two related but discrete events to be held at the MAK Center Schindler House in June and November, respectively. Both events focus on using language to make social and artistic change, and include a performance or panel discussion to be followed by a writing workshop.

This fellowship is made possible with support provided by the City of West Hollywood, proceeds from Figues Camp, and individual donors. You can learn more about the Kathy Acker Fellowship and provide your own support here.