Speaking Engagements

Lectures & Lecture-Performances

Lecture-performances include a pairing of reading or performance of poems from SOUVENIR, along with informative speeches to offer historical and cultural framing to the work. Individual lectures can be tailored to your event or class. Topics may include:

  • Identity politics and stereotypes

  • Filipino-American search for identity

  • Colorism, race and beauty standards

  • Immigration and the myth of the Melting Pot

  • Colonialism-- colonization and decolonization through writing

  • Cultural connection

  • Politics of exhibition and ties with body image

  • Craft of poetry

  • Introduction to creative writing

  • Spoken word

  • Social action writing

“Aimee Suzara embodies her poems with every word, phrase, nuance of emotion, meaning and beat. She mesmerizes you with the sound and music of her voice and her passionate delivery.”
— Genny Lim, poet and playwright

Readings

Aimee is dynamic in her performance style, often breaking the fourth wall and activating the audience in the poetic experience. Aimee can bring a featured poetry performance, solo theater scenes, and a vibrant reading of her newest poems.

For SOUVENIR, we recommend that the book be adopted as required reading and/or available for pre-purchase so that listeners may read along and be familiar with the work.

Readings include a Q&A portion and book signings.

 
“Aimee Suzara writes and performs with an unhurried beauty, lyricism, and love of words that contains all of her urgency and fierceness as a woman of color.”
— Aya de Leon, poet/performer
 

 Past Speaking Engagements

Presentations & Panels - selected

  • Workshops for Queer Cultural Center (Oakland, San Francisco), Artist Statements and Bios (for QCC artists and the public), 2020, 2021

  • “National Monuments: Poetry in Contested Spaces” Presenter, AWP (2017)

  • Guest Artist/Speaker, A/PA Institute, NYU, “America & Its Unfit: Eugenics Then & Now” (2015)

  • Guest Lecturer, Center for Women Writers, Salem College, North Carolina (Fall 2014)

  • Featured Workshop Facilitator, Northwest Filipino American Student Association Conference (2014)

  • Featured Workshop Instructor and Reader for Writer’s Week, UC Riverside (2014)

  • “Race, History and the Body: Social Acts of Writing” – Moderator and Presenter, AWP (2015)

  • “Social Action Writing: Our Words in the World” – Moderator and Presenter, AWP (2014)

  • “Be/aring Anger: Race in the Creative Writing Classroom” - Moderator and Presenter, AWP (2013)

  • “Meeting in the Margin: Discourses on Reading and Writing” (ECCTYC) Brunch Speaker, CA (2011)

  • Mills College Annual Professional Development Conference Presenter, CA (2008, 2011, and 2013)

  • Marin Academy Literary Festival - Presenter/performer, San Rafael, CA (2011 and 2009)

  • Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month - Featured presenter/Performer, CSU Monterey Bay (2009)

  • “Immigration Politics and the Body” - Panelist, Counterpulse, San Francisco, CA (2009)

  • Pilipino Cultural Night - Keynote speaker/performer, Kaibigan at Portland State University (2008)

  • Queer Pin@y Conference at UC Berkeley - Keynote Speaker and Performer (2008) 

Literary Readings & Performances - selected

  • Featured Poet, Thou Art Woman (based in Fort Lauderdale, FL), May 2021

  • Featured Poetry reading and workshop hosted by UC Merced Department of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures

    (September 2020)

  • Collaborative performance/Spoken Word Opera “Echoes” with Kronos Quartet, Living Earth, Campo Santo,

    Youth Speaks at Herbst Theater and ODC (2017 and 2020)

  • Featured poet at Jingletown Open Mic, Oakland (online) (October 2020) and live in 2018

  • Featured poet for the "Celebrating the Impossible" as part of the Impossible Summit (May 2020)

  • Featured poet at Speaking Axolotl Poetry reading focused on Filipino and Latinx and bilingual poets, Oakland,

    CA (2018)

  • Featured headlining poet at East Bay Soul Café, three times (2016-2018), CSU Hayward

  • Featured playwright/convocation speaker, Bridgwater College (May 2017)

  • Featured headlining poet, TownBiz Art Gallery, Oakland (March 2017)

  • Featured poet, Transformative Visions, Oakland (April 2017)

  • Featured Poet for Asian American and Pacific Heritage Month at Skyline College (May 2016)

  • Featured poet at "America & Its Unfit: Eugenics Then and Now,” A/P/A Institute, New York University (2015)

  • Featured Poet Featured Poet, Litquake at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival (May 2014)

  • Featured Performer, SFJazz Poetry Festival, curated by Ishmael Reed;

  • “Inside the Mind of Aimee Suzara,” Guest Presenter, Fresno City College (April 2014)

  • UVerse, University of Miami, FL - Featured Performer (2013)

  • Utah Literary Arts Festival, Salt Lake City, UT - Featured Performer (2013)

  • Featured poet sponsored by Atlanta Queer Literary Festival at Charis Books, Atlanta, GA (2012).

  • Featured poet at Scuppernong Books, Greensboro, NC (2013)

  • Women’s History Month Festival - Featured Performer, City College of San Francisco, CA (2009)

  • APIQWTC (API Queer Women / Transgender Community) Banquet, Feature, San Francisco, CA (2008);

  • APAture Festival –Featured Performer, Kearny Street Workshop, San Francisco (2008)