Darius Stewart
Hello everyone!
My name is Darius Stewart and I am a 2nd year MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program as well as a candidate for the graduate certificate in African-American studies.
I have an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers--the University of Texas at Austin--and a BA in English from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which happens also to be my hometown.
I have published three chapbooks of poetry, with the latest collection, The Ghost the Night Becomes, winning the 2013 Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. I have also published creative nonfiction essays, book reviews, and interviews in various literary journals.
To earn my keep here at Iowa, I teach the Interpretation of Literature, wherein various semesters I have focused on Transgressive Literatures; the Master-Slave Narrative in the 21st Century; Masterpieces of Modern Black Writing; and Race, Gender and the Pariah Figure in African-American Literature.
In my nonfiction writing, I am interested in how the fictive imagination (especially speculative tactics) can do much to capture the essence of a moment when memory becomes unreliable. This is important as I'm writing about personal addiction, and its attendant traumas, given how my long-term drug and alcohol abuses have made it difficult to recall a good deal of the past. This also includes writing about being black and gay and how this identification manifested an identity crisis that I dealt with not only through drug and alcohol abuses but with unsafe sex practices that eventually resulted in me testing positive for HIV.
Increasingly, I'm finding that I want my experience to contribute to the (far too few) narratives of gay, black men living with HIV, but also for my work to acknowledge those black and brown bodies who died from AIDS-related complications. I want my work to acknowledge that AIDS didn't affect just white, gay men; that the Reagan administration didn't just ignore white, gay men who were infected and dying by the thousands; and that the stories of black and brown bodies both male and female who have endured HIV/AIDS are as significant, privileged, and worthwhile as anyone else's.
My name is Darius Stewart and I am a 2nd year MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program as well as a candidate for the graduate certificate in African-American studies.
I have an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers--the University of Texas at Austin--and a BA in English from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which happens also to be my hometown.
I have published three chapbooks of poetry, with the latest collection, The Ghost the Night Becomes, winning the 2013 Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. I have also published creative nonfiction essays, book reviews, and interviews in various literary journals.
To earn my keep here at Iowa, I teach the Interpretation of Literature, wherein various semesters I have focused on Transgressive Literatures; the Master-Slave Narrative in the 21st Century; Masterpieces of Modern Black Writing; and Race, Gender and the Pariah Figure in African-American Literature.
In my nonfiction writing, I am interested in how the fictive imagination (especially speculative tactics) can do much to capture the essence of a moment when memory becomes unreliable. This is important as I'm writing about personal addiction, and its attendant traumas, given how my long-term drug and alcohol abuses have made it difficult to recall a good deal of the past. This also includes writing about being black and gay and how this identification manifested an identity crisis that I dealt with not only through drug and alcohol abuses but with unsafe sex practices that eventually resulted in me testing positive for HIV.
Increasingly, I'm finding that I want my experience to contribute to the (far too few) narratives of gay, black men living with HIV, but also for my work to acknowledge those black and brown bodies who died from AIDS-related complications. I want my work to acknowledge that AIDS didn't affect just white, gay men; that the Reagan administration didn't just ignore white, gay men who were infected and dying by the thousands; and that the stories of black and brown bodies both male and female who have endured HIV/AIDS are as significant, privileged, and worthwhile as anyone else's.
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