Anna Joy Springer is an American author, visual artist, feminist punk performer, and an associate professor of writing at

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

, Springer is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award (2010) and the Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Award for Visual Arts and Performance (2013).

Biography

Springer spent her early years in

Merced, California Merced (; Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on April ...

where her family raised birds. Springer attended school in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

and was friends with

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood tr ...

. She entered the punk scene and was a singer for the bands Blatz,

The Gr'ups Daniel Sea (born January 7, 1977) is an American filmmaker, actor and musician. They rose to prominence through their role as Max Sweeney on Showtime's drama series ''The L Word''. Personal life Daniel grew up in Malibu, California, raised by hip ...

, and Cypher in the Snow, touring the US and Europe. Springer has also toured with the feminist

spoken-word Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics ...

collective

Sister Spit Sister Spit was a lesbian-feminist spoken-word and performance art collective based in San Francisco, signed to Mr. Lady Records. They formed in 1994 and disbanded in 2006. Founding members included Michelle Tea and Sini Anderson, Other membe ...

. Springer earned her MFA in literary arts from Brown University in 2002. Characterized as an "ex-punk Buddhist dyke writer of cross-genre works", she is known for her work in

experimental literature Experimental literature is a genre that is, according to Warren Motte in his essa"Experimental Writing, Experimental Reading" "difficult to define with any sort of precision." He says the "writing is often invoked in an "offhand manner" and the ...

, including the books ''The Vicious Red Relic, Love'' (2011) and ''The Birdwisher'' (2009). In ''The Vicious Red Relic, Love'', Springer's protagonist fashions a creature to go back in time to be with her first lover as she commits suicide. In a review for ''The Journal'', Janis Butler Holm describes the book as postmodern and writes that it "prompts us to consider how cultures have taught us to express—and to suppress—our love, our sexuality, our grief."

References

External links

* * TT Jax
"Anna Joy Springer: Love, Trauma, Loss, and Forgiveness,"
Lambda Literary. April 9, 2012.
"Syllabus-ness: Graphic Texts & Experimental Writing,"
''ENTROPY''. September 3, 2014. {{DEFAULTSORT:Springer, Anna Joy Living people 21st-century American writers Brown University alumni University of California, San Diego faculty American feminist writers 21st-century American women writers Year of birth missing (living people) Women punk rock singers