Michael Turner: Writing in the Time You’ve Been Given

A one-on-one, conversation-based program of variable length designed to stimulate written and/or visual projects based on -- and in conversation with -- the exigencies of daily life. This program will draw on a range of historic practitioners working in a variety of genres and media, from Matsuo Bashō to Agnes Martin to Georges Perec to On Kawara. Although project-oriented, emphasis will be placed on the development of a sustained and nurturing artistic practice.

Michael Turner is an interdisciplinary writer of Eurasian ancestry (Scottish/German/Irish, mat.; English/Japanese/Russian, pat.) born, raised and currently living on unceded Coast Salish territory. He works in narrative and lyric forms -- both singularly, as a writer of fiction (American Whiskey Bar, The Pornographer’s Poem, 8x10), poetry (Hard Core Logo, Kingsway, 9x11), criticism and music; and collaboratively, with artists such as Stan Douglas (screenplays), Geoffrey Farmer (public art installations) and Fishbone, Dream Warriors, Kinnie Starr and Andrea Young (songs). His work has been described as intertextual, with an emphasis on “a detailed and purposeful examination of ordinary things” (Wikipedia). More recent interests are concerned with emergent relational pedagogy (MFA thesis: Course Language: How to Encourage the Reader to Collaborate on Our Seminar and Pass Me) -- the potential of the “classroom” as an interdisciplinary and collaborative genre.