Roberto Tejada is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing with a joint appointment in the department of Art History. He is the author of poetry collections that include Full Foreground (2012), Exposition Park (2010), Mirrors for Gold (2006), and Todo en el ahora (2015).
He founded and co-edited the journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, a multilingual annual of poetry and translation (1991-2014), and is the author of art histories that include National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (2009); a monograph on pioneering Chicana conceptual artist Celia Alvarez Muñoz (2009), and such catalog essays as “Los Angeles Snapshots” in Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980 (Hammer Museum, 2011).
His poetry and creative research develop the relationship between sight, display, public speech, and spectacle; he is at work on a trans-American project that examines specific art scenes of 1960s-1970s Los Angeles, 1980s-1990s Mexico City, and present-day São Paulo.
Mat Johnson is the author of the novels Loving Day, Pym, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a recipient of the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature.
He is a Professor at the UH Creative Writing Program.