PARA/normal Borders Discussion III: Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten
Cristina Rivera Garza + Fred Moten
Part III of the PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series
Language is one of the many borders that shape our lives. It carries histories, preserves memory, and creates new possibilities for connection across difference. Writers Cristina Rivera Garza and Fred Moten will both read from their work and then engage in a conversation about translation, poetry, and collective study, examining how literature moves across linguistic, cultural, and institutional boundaries. Together, they explore how literary practice can confront history, imagine new futures, and expand the possibilities of shared knowledge.
PARA/normal Borders is the 2026–27 edition of the MexiCali Biennial, a multidisciplinary exhibition and public humanities initiative exploring the borderlands as a space where visible and invisible histories converge. Rather than treating the border solely as a geopolitical boundary, the project approaches it as a cultural, psychological, ecological, and technological condition that shapes contemporary life.
Inspired by the concept of the borderlands as a “thin place,” PARA/normal Borders considers how migration, language, memory, Indigenous knowledge, media, surveillance, and speculative futures intersect across the California–Mexico border region. Through exhibitions, performances, publications, research initiatives, and public conversations, the Biennial invites artists, writers, scholars, and communities to examine the many ways borders continue to influence how we remember, imagine, and inhabit the world.
The PARA/normal Borders Conversation Series brings together MacArthur Fellows whose work expands our understanding of borders across literature, film, visual art, music, and critical scholarship.
This program is co-presented by the MexiCali Biennial and the University of California, San Diego Department of Literature’s New Writing Series, in partnership with the University of California, San Diego Department of Visual Arts and the Archive for New Poetry.
This event is free and open to the public.
Public reception immediately following event.
Cristina Rivera Garza is a Mexican writer, historian, and critic. She is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, the English-language version of El invencible verano de Liliana, as well as numerous works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and literary criticism, including The Taiga Syndrome, The Iliac Crest, and Autobiography of Cotton. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, she is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Chair and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston. Her work explores memory, gendered violence, archives, territory, and the shifting borders between literary forms.
Fred Moten teaches in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University. He has written several books of criticism/poetry, the latest of which are consent not to be a single being and préfume. Moten is co-author with Stefano Harney of three books, including most recently All Incomplete. He has collaborated on many projects with artist Wu Tsang, including the 2016 book Who Touched Me? Moten also frequently accompanies instrumentalists/composers Gerald Cleaver and Brandon López. His latest album with López is called Revision. Moten works on all of this with his comrade, scholar Laura Harris, their children, Julian and Lorenzo, and many others.
About the Organizers:
The MexiCali Biennial is a nonprofit contemporary art organization dedicated to exploring the cultural, social, and political complexities of the California–Mexico border region through exhibitions, research, publications, and public programming. Since its founding in 2006, the Biennial has brought together artists, scholars, writers, and community partners to examine the U.S.–Mexico border not simply as a geopolitical boundary, but as a dynamic site of exchange, creativity, and critical inquiry. The 2026–27 edition, PARA/normal Borders, explores the borderlands as a “thin place” where histories, memories, languages, technologies, and speculative futures converge. Through exhibitions, conversations, performances, and educational initiatives across Southern California and Baja California, the MexiCali Biennial fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and expands public understanding of the border as a space of artistic experimentation and cultural imagination. Learn more at mexicalibiennial.org.
UC San Diego’s New Writing Series invites local, national, and international authors to read and perform throughout the academic year. Welcoming a wide range of authors and genres, including playwrights, poets, translators, essayists, critics, fiction writers, and performance artists, the New Writing Series celebrates both emerging and established award-winning writers. Readers also include Department of Literature faculty and graduate students in the MFA Program in Writing. The readings are followed by in-depth question and answer periods that center on craft and artistic practice.
PARA/normal Borders is made possible through support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through its X-Grant program celebrating the Foundation’s 40th anniversary. Additional support is provided by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council.