Writers@Grinnell Welcomes DJ Savarese, Thurs. Dec. 8, 2022; 5 p.m. at the Pioneer Bookstore

David James “DJ” Savarese is an artful activist, multi-genre writer, scholar, teacher, and practicing optimist. A 2022/23 Iowa Arts Fellow and Zoeglossia Fellow, he is the author of Swoon (2022) and A Doorknob for the Eye (2017) and a co-author of Studies in Brotherly Love (2021). His lyric essay “Passive Plants” was a Pushcart Prize nominee and notable essay in Best American Essays (2018). His recently published scholarship includes “Disrupting the Garden Wall” in Logic Magazine; “Enmeshing Selves, Words and Media, or Two Life Writers in One Family Talk about Art and Disability” in Er(r)go; “Coming to My Senses” in Autism in Adulthood; and “Unearthing the Concepts That Bury Us,” a chapter forthcoming in a scholarly anthology on Disability and Dialogue. Co-producer, narrative commentator, and subject of the Peabody award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary Deej: Inclusion Shouldn’t Be a Lottery (2017), he founded Listen2Us: Writing Our Own Futures as an OSF Human Rights Initiative Community Youth Fellow. He co-teaches inclusive, multigenerational, global poetry writing classes through the LYNX Project in Chicago. As co-chair of The Alliance for Citizen Directed Supports, he designed and directs the Lives-in-Progress Collective.