Prairie Lights

The University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing and Translation MFA Programs present Raquel Gutiérrez, who will read from her new book, Brown Neon.  “In these essays by a poet, arts writer, and self-identified ‘queer brown butch,’ encounters in Los Angeles and the Southwest with aging punks, border activists, lesbian legends, and others give rise to explorations of Latinx identity, cultural resistance, and the role of art. . . . The landscape cannot be separated from its history of violence, and there is no desert vista ‘that doesn’t have the uncanny attached to it.’” —The New Yorker
Raquel Gutiérrez is an arts critic, writer, poet, and educator.  Gutiérrez is a 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism and a 2017 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She is/They are faculty for Oregon State University-Cascades’ Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Gutiérrez calls Tucson, Arizona, home.