Myriam Gurba

Gurba toured with Sister Spit,[6] a "lesbian-feminist spoken-word and performance art collective."[7] She read at Radar,[8] Bootleg Theater,[9][10] Skylight Books,[11][12] Book Show,[13] Rhapsodomancy,[14] The Poetic Research Bureau,[15] Tongue & Groove,[16] Small Press Fest at Pitzer College,[17] Gallery 211[18][19][20] Booksmith[21] and Charis Books & More.[22]

Gurba exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art[23][24] and The Center Long Beach.[25]

Gurba is the author of three books: Mean (Coffee House Press, 2017),[26][27] Painting Their Portraits in Winter: Stories (Manic D Press, 2015)[28][27][29] and Dahlia Season: Stories and a Novella (Manic D Press/Future Tense, 2007).[30][31][32] She wrote the chapbooks: Sweatsuits of the Damned (RADAR Productions, 2013), Menudo & Herb: a little book to reach for during big bowel movements (2013), A White Girl Named Shaquanda: A Chomo Allegory and Trewish Story (2013),[33] River Candy (eohippus labs)[34] and Wish You Were Me (Future Tense Books, 2011).[35]

Gurba's work has been anthologized in Best American Erotica (St. Martin's), Bottom's Up (Soft Skull), Tough Girls (Black Books)[36] Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing[37] and Secrets & Confidences: The Complicated Truth about Women's Friendships (Seal).[38] Her poetry appears in Entropy[39] and Everyday Genius.[40] Her prose appears in Time (magazine),[41] Colorlines,[42] Les Figues Press,[43] Zocalo Public Square,[44] The Wanderer,[45] figment[46] and XQsi Magazine.[47]

Gurba has written a series of essays for The Paris Review, each about a single word: Striking [48], Salty,[49] Avuncular,[50] as well as an article titled The Mexican Bandit. [51] She contributed an essay, "Laugh Lines," for a #MeToo focus of American Book Review.[52]

Gurba's Tropics of Meta review of the book American Dirt sparked controversy about cultural appropriation,[53] the white gaze, racism, #ownvoices, and lack of diversity in the publishing industry.[54][55]

Gurba's debut novel Dahlia Season[56] won The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction from Publishing Triangle, and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.[57][58] Dazed ranked Dahlia Season among their list of queer lit classics.[59] Emily Gould described Gurba as "a new writer for the first time whose voice is different from any you’ve heard before and who you want to keep hearing forever."[60]

The New York Times' Meghan Daum calls Mean one of the five best memoirs of 2017, writing "Gurba has a voice as distinct and infectious as any I’ve discovered in recent years. “Mean” contains the usual childhood confusions and adolescent humiliations, but it’s also a meditation on race, class, sexuality and the limits of niceness."[61]

New York Times' Parul Seghal calls Mean “a scalding memoir that comes with a full accounting of the costs of survival, of being haunted by those you could not save and learning to live with their ghosts.” It also “adds a necessary dimension to the discussion of the interplay of race, class and sexuality in sexual violence."[62]

Reviews of Gurba's work appear The Iowan Review,[63] The Paris Review,[64] The Lesbrary,[65] Rain Taxi,[66] BIG OTHER[67] and Wing Chair Books.[68] Jill Soloway blurbs for Mean, describing Gurba's voice as, "an alchemy of queer magic feminist wildness, and intersectional explosion." [69] Michelle Tea reviews Mean as a book that mesmerizes with prose, stating that, "there is no other writer like Myriam Gurba and Mean is perfection." [70]

Articles about her appears in KQED,[2] The Edge LB[71] and Confessions of a Boy Toy.[72]

Interviews with her appear in The Los Angeles Review of Books,[73] OC Weekly,[74] MOLAA,[75] The Normal School,[76] Weird Sister[77] and Otherppl.[78] Playlists for Gurba's writing appear in Largehearted Boy.[79][80]

Myriam Gurba's website