Anna Joy Springer

Anna Joy Springer (she, they) is a lifelong Californian whose artistic work uses fantastical, speculative, and other figurative modes to explore the nature of interbeing and to register lesser cultural currents through writing and pictures. She is author of The Birdwisher, The Vicious Red Relic, Love, and The Forests of the Vicious Red Relic, Love: A Companion to the Memoir, along with other publications across genres. Frontwoman of former punk bands Blatz, The Gr'ups, and Cypher in the Snow, Anna Joy's hardcore full-throated feminism inflects a wildly responsive performance style that's saturated in femme camp, intellectual reflexivity, and political outrage. Anna Joy widely toured the U.S. and Europe in the 1990's in her bands and as a member of Sister Spit, a queer feminist troupe of writers. Records featuring her bands and literary projects are available on digital platforms, CD, and vinyl. Currently an Associate Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, Anna Joy got a B.A. in Humanities from New College of California with support from a Pell Grant and continued her education at Brown University, where she was awarded an M.F.A. in Literary Arts (Fiction) as well as the John Assatly Memorial Award in Fiction and the Weston Family Prize in Creative Writing, Fiction. Deeply influenced by student-centered social justice pedagogies, Anna Joy helped design and direct UCSD's cross-genre MFA program in literary arts, receiving a Distinguished Teaching Award for excellence in instruction. She's also the recipient of Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Award for Excellence in Performing and Visual Arts, two fellowship awards from the Hellman Foundation, and a Dean's Innovation Award. Both in the academy and in other settings, she teaches a wide range of writing, graphic texts, and embodied mindfulness courses incorporating over twenty years of experience as professional writing instructor.