SELECTED PRESENTATIONS, PERFORMANCES, WORKSHOPS, AND CONFERENCES
+AWP 2023 Seattle, Panelist:
Hybrid Memoirs by Writers of Color
Jen Soong, Jackson Bliss, Ella deCastro Baron, Grace Loh Prasad
Friday, March 10, 2023
9:00 – 10:15 a.m.
AWP! Seattle Convention Center
Most memoirs take readers on a journey through a steady, singular voice. But writers with complicated life stories and layered identities (BIPOC, mixed race, marginalized) aren’t always served by conventional story structure. Much like the hit film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, hybrid memoirs stitch together multiple realities, voices, and aesthetic approaches, stretching the boundaries of autobiographical storytelling to convey the polyphonic brilliance of their experiences.
+AWP 2023 Seattle, Panelist:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Food
Grace Hwang Lynch, Madrushree Ghosh, Grace M. Cho, Lisa Lee Herrick, & Ella deCastro Baron+”To Exist is to Flare: Loving Our Chronically Ill Bodies & Minds” via Corporeal Writing. Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023, 1-4 pm PST/4-7 pm EST (virtual).
+”Coffee Talk #42″ From Coffee and Grief community. January 7, 2023, 7-8 pm PST (every first Thursday of the month). Five readers’ words (and images) on grief. In order: Laurie Easter, Dusty Holt Bryndal, Briezer Huling, Stephanie Silenti, Ella deCastro Baron
+”Holiday Edition: To Exist is to Flare.” Saturday, December 4, 2022, 4-6 pm PST/7-9 pm EST.
+”To Exist is to Flare” Reading & Art Share (virtual via Zoom). Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022, 4-6 pm PST/ 7-9 pm EST. A time of poetry, CNF (creative nonfiction), memoir, art by chronically ill folx (of mind, of body) who are part of the Corporeal Writing’s “To Exist is to Flare” community. A fundraiser to support future attendees (it’s expensive to be sick!). A truly dynamic celebration and medicine, a sacred moment to recognize ourselves in each other.
+Grief Circle (in-person), Kumeyaay territory (San Diego). Thursday, August 11, 2022. 7-9 pm. This was an embodied effort facilitated by music and sounds: naming griefs (based on Francis Weller’s 5 Gates of Grief), drumming together, being washed over by live piano music, and voicing poetry). 
+”To Exist is to Flare: Loving Our Chronically Ill Bodies & Minds” via Corporeal Writing. Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, 1-4 pm PST/4-7 pm EST (virtual).
+Salo-Salo: A Storytelling Feast for Brown Women’s Herstory Month, March 7, 2022. 5-7 pm PST/ 8-10 pm EST/ Manila Time, March 8, 9-11 am
This global Salo-Salo (Filipino term for “banquet, gathering”) offered compelling, imaginative, sacred, unforgettable multi-media storytelling by Kimberly “Kimchee” Kaminski, Vex Kaztro, Rosario Rosario (Rose Sabangan), and Gimi Willie. These Creatives embody stories woven with the Philippines, transracial adoption, family, mixed ‘race’ complexity, Indigeneity, pirates, and more. Participants at the virtual feast also created hay(na)ku, a Filipino poetic form, as an ekphrastic engagement with Mattaja Willie’s self-portrait. (Hosted by Ella deCastro Baron, this is a passion project in partnership with the Lacuna Collective, in the spirit of Kapwa.)
+Salo-Salo: A Storytelling Feast, Oct. 25, 2021. 5 – 7 pm PST over Zoom.
+Coffee Talk Reading #26, Sept. 2, 2021. Coffee and Grief hosts a one hour reading on the first Thursday of each month. Their description: “Grab your favorite coffee and let’s talk about grief. To grieve is to be human. There is no right or wrong. Grief can cover something small like the loss of an object to losing your job or health to the death of a beloved. Here it is ok to not be ok.” [Update: watch the recorded hour under Media]
+Summer Solstice Reading–a Corporeal Writing’s “Body of the Book” cohort–Arya Samuelson, Becca, Ella, Erin, Jumi, Sandy, and Tai. June 20, 2021, 5 p.m. PST via Zoom. Donations gladly accepted towards BIPOC scholarships for future Corporeal Writing Collaborations. (Update: thank you for the love & donations! They helped several BIPOC attend Corporeal Writing’s “Where We Come From” in 2021.)
+(Her)oics Asian American Writers’ Experiences in the Pandemic – May 16, 2021 4:00 PM PST
From the editors: Given the challenging news of ongoing anti-Asian sentiment and violence, we are very proud these writers have shared their work with the anthology. We will gather with gratitude, praise their stellar writing, and embrace these humbling stories.
Sharing excerpts of their essays:
Hannah Agustin, Whitewater, WI. On Isolation;
Ella deCastro Baron, La Mesa, CA. Bahala Na;
Shizue Seigel, San Francisco, CA. Prayers for a New Reality;
Joanna Mailani Lima, San Diego, CA. Sacred Story Stitching
+“A Conspiracy of Lemurs” podcast, “Surviving Racism in a Global Pandemic: Being Black or Brown in America during the Coronavirus Pandemic.”
Alicia Mosley and Ella deCastro Baron, contributors to the recently released (Her)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic, and Joanell Serra, coeditor of (Her)oics, (Pact Press, March 2021) will discuss their contributed stories: “Mosley’s Mothering while Black during the Pandemic” and deCastro Baron’s “Bahala Na.” In conversation with Pam and Jaynie, they will consider the impact culture and race had on their communities’ experience of the pandemic. Ella deCastro Baron is a second generation Filipinx American professor and author living in San Diego, California. Alicia Mosley is a poet and fiction writer, a mother of four, and a community educator. She earned her MEd in Curriculum Development and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside.
+Write in-between. 12/19/20. Virtual writing workshop to support the Fair Fight organization
+Harvesting Words. 10/25/20. Virtual writing with Chris Baron & Ella deCastro Baron
+A needed time of kapwa (shared identity, interconnection) during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Music, shared storytelling, and community from the U.S. held each other up a part of Filipinx American History Month (October) and the new APIDA Center at San Diego State University.
+Featured Author: Second Sunday Author Series San Diego Writer’s Ink: Women’s Voices, Women’s Stories A Collaboration of the Women’s Museum of California and San Diego Writers, Ink 4:30-5:30 pm at the Women’s Museum, Barracks 16, Liberty Station April 2017
+Performance: Hausmann Quartet and So Say We All partner to present Seven Last Words at Liberty Station’s Historic North Chapel, March 2017
+Book reading/performance, Tenth Annual San Diego City College International Book Fair, San Diego, CA 2015
+Presentation, Banned Books Week Celebration, Grossmont College, 2015
+Book reading/performance, Ninth Annual San Diego City College International Book Fair, San Diego, CA 2014
+Book reading/performance, Filipino American Heritage Month, Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA 2012-2015
+Performance, VAMP (Visual/Audio Monologue Performance), So Say We All, San Diego, CA 2014
+Book Reading and workshop, Fil-Am (Filipino American) Fest, San Diego, CA 2013
+Performance, KALI (Kapwa Leadership Institute) San Mateo, CA 2013
+Workshop Co-Presenter, “Poetry of Witness,” Poetry in the Cathedral 2012
+Panelist, Miramar College Filipino American Authors, San Diego, CA 2011
+Book Reading/performance, Pilipino American Graduate Student Association, UC Berkeley, 2010
+Book reading/performance, Borders Bookstore, El Cajon, CA 2010
+Seminar, “Navigating the Intersection of Faith and Ethnicity,” InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Asian American Staff Conference, San Mateo, CA 2010
+Book reading/performance and healing event, Coast Vineyard Christian Fellowship, La Jolla, CA 2010
+Book reading/performance, Writers’ Series, Southwestern College, Chula Vista, CA 2010
+Book reading/performance, Grossmont College’s 14th Annual Literary Arts Festival, San Diego, CA 2010
+Book reading/performance & Artist Panelist, Asian Pacific American Conference, Millbrae, CA 2010
+Book reading/performance, Hugh Hyde Living Writer’s Series, Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading, SDSU, San Diego, CA 2009
+Book reading/performance, Women’s Event, Coast Vineyard Christian Fellowship, Del Mar, CA 2009
+Book reading/performance, San Diego City College International Book Fair, San Diego, CA 2009