GIOVAN ALONZI
Short Bio:
Giovan Alonzi holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CalArts, where his thesis was awarded the Emi Kuriyama Memorial Thesis Award. His writing has appeared in Fence, Los Angeles Review of Books, rivulet, Full Stop, & elsewhere. He teaches writing composition at California State University Northridge in both the Department of Central American & Transborder Studies & the English Department.
Longer Bio:
Giovan Alonzi's writing has appeared in Fence, Los Angeles Review of Books, rivulet, Full Stop, & elsewhere. At CalArts, where he completed his MFA in Creative Writing, his thesis was awarded the Emi Kuriyama Memorial Thesis Award & he was named a 2018 REEF resident. He’s presented his work at Beyond Baroque, Poetic Research Bureau, Page Against The Machine, Thymele Arts, The Pop Hop Book Co-Op, REDCAT, and other venues in Los Angeles.
Primarily a poet, his work often investigates mutations & iterations of “whiteness.” For instance: the primary mode of verse in his manuscript light against a speckled wood is one that constantly mutates between pharmaceutical rigidity, narrative digression, slapstick puns, poetic echos and invocations of folklore, mythology, & music—an attempt at interpreting the unsteady and wildly generative/destructive process known as radioactive decay. This becomes a work of visual & aural ekphrases, navigating through “a swamp” of millennium nu-metal and rap-rock aesthetics. Of late, he has been writing a poetry book that reimagines the Homeric cyclops Polyphemus as a familial, commercial, and national ancestor.
A 3rd-generation Angeleno, he grew up in Van Nuys playing sports & music before moving to San Francisco where he earned his B.A. in English Literature & worked, at different times, as a gymnastics instructor for children, a car-rental salesman, & a produce clerk. At San Francisco State University, he was academically & culturally influenced by its Ethnic Studies Department & its activist legacy. While taking classes in the department, he was also organizing with students against budget cuts that came to a head in 2009 in the CSU & UC systems. These experiences ignited in him an enduring concern for post-colonial literature from around the earth that continues to influence his pedagogy & creative work.
He currently teaches writing composition at East Los Angeles College & California State University Northridge in both the Department of Central American & Transborder Studies, & the English Department; he's also taught creative writing in various parts of Los Angeles — from Loyola Marymount University to Barry J. Nidorf juvenile hall through WriteGirl's 'Bold Ink Writers' program, as well as in other high schools & community centers.
He, his wife & daughter live in Los Angeles on unceded Tongva land.