Queer Memoir + Rhizomes with Serena Chopra

Serena Chopra (she/her) is a teacher, writer, dancer, filmmaker, and a visual and performance artist. She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar. She has two books, This Human (Coconut Books 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press 2017), as well as two films, Dogana//Chapti (Official Selection at Frameline43, Oregon Documentary Film Festival, and Seattle Queer Film Festival), and Mother Ghosting (2018). She was a featured artist in Harper's Bazaar (India) as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives.” She has recent publications in Sink, Foglifter, Matters of Feminist Practice, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (Central Avenue Publishing). In October 2020, Serena co-directed No Place to Go, an artist-made queer haunted house with Kate Speer and Frankie Toan. Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University.

In this episode, Serena and Brandi talk about the intersections of Queer Memoir + Rhizomes, including:

• The way Serena isn’t just holding contradictions now but sees contradictions as “the situation of life.”
• How queer narratives don’t have to be “legible” or easily consumable.
• In what ways we’ve repressed our visionary intuitions in order to fit inside of institutions.
• The difference between an “arborescent” version of intelligence, and a “rhizomatic” version of intelligence.
• Tarot reading as a blueprint of our subconscious and engaging in reading and writing as a form of “bibliomancy.”
• The refusal to be contained by the capitalist and colonialist economies that create binaries and margins that oppress and harm us.
• The way you’re “supposed to be an academic” filters into one’s psyche.
• Growing up in ballet and the struggle to let go, which led Serena to poetry and modern dance.
• The best advice Serena has ever had, which came from a dance teacher.
• How much extra work it takes BIPOC, queer, female-identified writers and artists to be artists.

Listeners can find Serena’s work on her website, serenachopra.com, and on Instagram @serena_rose_chopra.

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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital