Serena Chopra is a teacher, writer, dancer, filmmaker, soundscape designer and a visual and performance artist. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is a MacDowell Fellow (Stanford Calderwood Fellow, 2022), a Kundiman Fellow, a RedLine Artist-in-Residence and a Fulbright Scholar (Bangalore, India). She has two books, This Human (Coconut Books 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press 2017), as well as two films, Dogana/Chapti (Official Selection at Frameline43, Oregon Documentary Film Festival, QueerX and Seattle Queer Film Festival) and Mother Ghosting (2018). She was a co-founder and actor in the poet’s theater group, GASP (Denver Colorado, 2011-2018), and in 2016 she worked with Splintered Light Theater on a full-length production of her most recent book, Ic, for which she composed the soundscape. She was a featured artist in Harper’s Bazaar (India), Revry, as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives,” and has recent creative publications with the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Burrow Press Review, Sink, Foglifter as well as in the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (Central Avenue Publishing, 2020; Washington State Book Award, 2021). She has critical essays in Matters of Feminist Practice (Belladonna Collective, 2019), Rehearsing Racial Equity: A Critical Anthology on Anti-Racism and Repair in the Arts (Amherst College Press, forthcoming 2024) and in the republication of Judy Grahn’s The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition (Sinister Wisdom, 2023). In October 2020, Serena co-directed No Place to Go, an immersive, artist-made queer haunted house with choreographer Kate Speer and artist Frankie Toan. Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University.
If interested in inviting Dr. Chopra for teaching, lectures, visiting artist workshops, retreats, readings or other performances or events, please send an email to Serena.R.Chopra@gmail.com.
Books
This Human, Coconut Books, 2013
-Purchase from Small Press Distribution or Amazon
Ic, Horse Less Press, 2017
-Purchase from Small Press Distribution or Amazon
Chapbooks
Penumbra, Flying Guillotine Press, 2012
Livid Season, Free Poetry, 2012 [out of print]
Anthologies
- Rehearsing Racial Equity: A Critical Anthology on Anti-Racism and Repair in the Arts edited by Jasmine Mahmoud and Roxanne Hornbeck. forthcoming 2024
- “I Wanted to Write a Book that Was Like Laying Down: Proximity to Loss and the Erotics of Antiracist Healing,” by Serena Chopra
- The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition by Judy Grahn, republication by Sinister Wisdom, 2023
- “A House of Haunted Women,” by Serena Chopra
- Alone Together: Love Grief and Comfort in the Time of Covid19, ed. Jennifer Haupt, Central Avenue Publishing, 2020
- “Seduction, after Fruit and Mercy” by Serena Chopra
- Winner of the Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction
Recent Reading and Speaking Engagements
- Help!, Belldonna* Collective at Pratt, Brooklyn, April 10th, 2023
- Margin Shift, Seattle, WA
- Poetry of Witness, Poetry of Resistance, RCAH Center for Poetry at Michigan State University, October 6th, 2021
- The Poetry Project: “This Is All that Matters:South Asian Poets on Diaspora, Kith, Material and Speech with Serena Rose Chopra, Kama La Mackerel, Aditi Machado, Prageeta Sharma and Divya Victor,” September 29th, 2021
- The Poetry Project featuring Luiza Flynn-Goodlett and Serena Chopra, April 16th, 2021
- Belladonna* Collective Reading Series, Matters of Feminist Practice Reading, August, August 18, 2020
- “The Veer and the Verge: A Discussion of National Identity, Migration and Diasporic Convergence in Divya Victor’s CURB,” Panelist, &Now Festival: Points of Convergence, University of Washington Bothell, September 2019
- Serena Chopra in Conversation with Amy Tan and Kathryn Bostic on James Redford’s Amy Tan: Unintentional Memoir, Denver Film Woman + Film Festival, April 2021
- “Real Life, Real Art,” Panelist, Lighthouse Lit Fest, Denver/Virtual, June 13th, 2020
- with Danez Smith, Lacy M. Johnson and Francesca Sloane
- “The Veer & the Verge: A Discussion of National Identity, Migration, and Diasporic Convergence in Divya Victor’s CURB” Panelist, &Now Festival of Innovative Writing, Bothell, WA, 2019
- “Notes on Excavating Trauma,” Panelist, Moderated by Sara Renee Marshall, &Now Festival of Innovative Writing, Bothell, WA, 2019
- “Excavating Trauma and Elevating Self-Care: A Cross-Genre Conversation on Convergence,” Panelist, &Now Festival: Points of Convergence, University of Washington Bothell, September 2019
- Summer Writing Program Faculty Lecture and Reading, Naropa University, Boulder, June 2019
- Denver Museum’s UNTITLED featuring Suchitra Mattai, March 29th, 2019
- “A Conversation Between Poet-Grammarians”, co-Interview with Aditi Machado (a conversation on Machado’s Some Beheadings and Chopra’s Ic), Jacket2, curated by Divya Victor, Fall 2018
Select Online and Journal Publications
“Grazing on the Nerves of Forgiveness,” Burrow Press Review, Special Issue edited by Bre’Anna Bivens, September 2023
“Garden Variety with Lesbians,” Academy of American Poets, Poem-a-Day, curated by Divya Victor, August 16, 2023
Dayawati, Full of Mercy (film), Action Books, Accelerants, June 28th, 2023
selections from “What Is Feral and that Is Night,” Foglifter Blog, December 2020
“My Family’s Fears,”@Salon 2020–Freedom Now, @Salon Queer Soundart Showcase curated by Samuel Ace, Illinois State University, Spring 2020
selections from “Dayawati, Of Mercy,” Sink, Issue 19, Spring 2020
selections from “When What Is Feral and that Is Night,” Foglifter, Volume 4, Issue 2, Fall 2019
“Rampage, Wounds and Chthonic Desire: A Mythological Complex for the Feminist Poetic Line,” Matters of Feminist Practice: A Journal of Feminist Criticism, Volume 1, Winter 2019, Belladonna Collective
“Notes on Excavating Trauma,” Luna Luna Magazine, September 30, 2019
“A Conversation Between Poet-Grammarians”, Co-Interview with Aditi Machado (a conversation on Machado’s Some Beheadings and Chopra’s Ic), Jacket2, curated by Divya Victor, Fall 2018
Harper’s Bazaar India: 9th Anniversary Issue, Featured Artist, March 2018
Review of Anne Waldman’s Dream Book of Fez, The Lune, Issue #10, Spring 2016
“Notch and Making,” The Volta: Evening Will Come, Insect Poetics ed. Mathias Svalina, Issue #59, November 2015
Excerpt from Ic, Visible Binary, Issue 0, Spring 2016
From Ic , The Birds We Piled Loosely, Issue #7, April 2016
Selections from “Cheap Data,” Alice Blue Review, Issue #27, 2016
“A Sea-Sick Man,” Everyday Genius, October 24, 2013
Excerpt from “Livid Season,” Hot Metal Bridge: End of the Day, Fall 2011
Excerpt from “Livid Season,” Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Volume 6, Summer 2012
“Deformation,” Interior and Structure” and “Force and Stress,” Alice Blue Review, Issue #8, 2008
Reading Clips
“My Family’s Fears,” Soundscape and Poem composed by Serena Chopra, 2017
Selection from Queerly Is the Night, Voluble, curator Gabrielle Calvocoressi
“Violet Giant” and excerpts from Untitled work, at Counterpath with Rob Schlegel and Jeff Alessendrelli, Denver, March 18, 2014
Untitled Work (early version of Ic), at Counterpath with Rob Schlegel and Jeff Alessendrelli, Denver, March 18, 2014
“Violet Giant,” at What’s New in Poetry? series, Emory University, Atlanta, December 12, 2013
Podcasts/Reviews/Interviews/Media
“Multi-Talented Interdisciplinary Artist, Serena Chopra,” Revry, January 4th, 2022
“Queer Memoir and Rhizomes with Serena Chopra,” This Plus That podcast, October 26th, 2021
“Queering the Age of Aquarius with Dr. Serena Chopra,” What the Folk podcast, Episode 16, December 30, 2020
“On Creativity in the Pandemic,” The Volta, “Interiors,” April 2020
“A Conversation Between Poet-Grammarians”, Co-Interview with Aditi Machado (a conversation on Machado’s Some Beheadings and Chopra’s Ic), Jacket2, curated by Divya Victor, Fall 2018
“100 Colorado Creatives 4.0, #8: Serena Chopra”, Denver Westword, August 9th, 2018, Susan Froyd
Harper’s Bazaar India: 9th Anniversary Issue (Print Edition), Featured Artist, March 2018
“Exploring Queerness through Indian Culture,”, University of Denver AHSS Newsroom: Alumni+Community, June 28, 2018, Annetta Crecelius
Interview with One Million Wild Hearts, 2017
“Poet Serena Chopra Embodies Calm in a Hectic Time,” Flagpole, by Thibault Raoult, May 11, 2016
“Poetry Now: Colorado Poets Read Their Work,” The Denver Post, by Ray Rinaldi and Lindsay Pierce, 2015
The Blood-Jet Radio, Episode #100: Serena Chopra, author of This Human, interview by Rachell Cruz, November 12, 2013
“This Human, an Interview with Serena Chopra,” RedLine Gallery Denver, 2013
“Poet Serena Chopra on Contemporary Loneliness and Her First Full-Length Book, This Human,” by Robin Edwards, Westword Denver, April 10, 2013
Review of Serena Chopra’s Penumbra, by Joshua Ware, July 4, 2012
“Serena Chopra’s New Poetry Chapbook Examines Geology, Language and Trust,” by Robin Edwards, Westword Denver, April 6, 2012
Collaborations
Splintered Light Theater’s production of Serena Chopra’s, Ic, Denver June 2016:
Ic Performance Footage, Directed by Andryn Arithson
Ic Sound Score, Composed by Serena Chopra
Memory Is a Future Tense, a Text/Image Collaboration with artist, Lu Cong
Collections, a digital instillation by artist, Bryan Leister, with text by Serena Chopra, 2012
“She is Jet Propulsion…” and “Notes on Feeling,” Images by artist, Gretchen Marie Schaefer, 2012
Citations
“Feminist Poetries of the Open Wound,” by Julie Carr, The New Feminist Literary Studies, ed. Jennifer Cooke, Cambridge University Press, 2020
“[Woman Wailing]: On the Problem of Representing Trauma as a Brown Woman Within the Institution of Poetry,” by Divya Victor, Poetry Foundation, 2019