Carla Harryman
Author
Known for her boundary breaking investigations of genre, non/narrative poetics,
and text-based performance, Carla Harryman is the author of twenty-four books and
chapbooks including the collection of poetry and performance writings published in
French and English editions Sue in Berlin and Sue á Berlin (2017); the epistolary
essay, Artifact of Hope (2017); the diptych W—/M— (2013), the Essay Press
collection Adorno’s Noise (2008), Gardener of Stars: A Novel (2001), and two
volumes of selected writing: Animal Instincts: Prose, Plays, Essays (1989) and There
Never Was a Rose without a Thorn (1995). Her most recent book, A Voice to Perform
(Split/Level 2020) includes a second edition of Memory Play, originally published
by O Books. An active collaborator, she is one of ten co-authors of The Grand Piano,
an Experiment in Collective Autobiography: San Francisco, 1975-1980 (2006-2010).
Open Box, a CD of music and spoken text performance created with composer and
musician Jon Raskin was released on the Tzadik label in 2012. Her Poets Theater
plays and music/text collaborations have been performed nationally and
internationally, including at dOCUMENTA 13, Outsound Music Summit in San
Francisco, The Stone in New York, the Hölderlinturm in Tübingen, Germany, and
Beton Salon in Paris. She is the editor of two critical volumes: Non/Narrative, a
special issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory (2012) and Lust for Life: On the
Writings of Kathy Acker (with Avital Ronell and Amy Scholder, Verso, 2006).
In 2018, a two-day international discussion of Harryman’s creative, critical, and
performance works took place at the Université Paris 7: Poets and Critics Symposium,
2018. Her writing has been translated in French, Spanish, German, Czech, Russian,
and several other languages; and her work has appeared in thirty national and
international anthologies. Her grants and awards include The Foundation of
Contemporary Art, New York; Opera America Next Stage (with Erling Wold);
Alexander Gerbode Foundation; The Fund for Poetry, and The Ronald W. Collins
Distinguished Faculty in Creative Activity Award from Eastern Michigan University.
A compilation of solo performances by musicians, performers, and visual
artists who have interpreted passages from A Voice to Perform is available online.
