Tommy Pico | |
|---|---|
 Pico at the 2018 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | December 13, 1983 |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, poet, and podcast host |
| Notable work | IRL, Nature Poem |
Tommy Pico (born December 13, 1983) is a Native American (Kumeyaay Nation) writer, poet, and podcast host. [1] [2]
Pico grew up on the Viejas Reservation of the Viejas Group of Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians, a Kumeyaay tribe near San Diego. His father was a tribal chairman. [3] [4] At age five, Pico started writing comics, and as a teenager he created zines and wrote poetry. [5] His name in Kumeyaay means "bird song". [6]
Pico attended Sarah Lawrence College, where he studied pre-med with the intention of returning to the reservation as a doctor. He decided not to pursue medicine and moved to New York City, where he worked as a barista in Williamsburg and started writing poetry. [3]
In 2008, Pico lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn. [5] In 2019, Pico moved to Los Angeles with a friend of his. [6]
In 2011, Pico was an inaugural mentor in the Queer/Art/Mentors programme; [2] [7] in 2013 he was a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry. [2] [8]
In 2016, Pico's first book IRL was published by the small press Birds, LLC. [9] IRL is written as one long text message, drawing on the epic tradition. [5] Pico's poem was written in first-person narration, from the perspective of Teebs. Teebs is a fictional character writing about fictional events, however, the character parallels as Pico's alter-ego and is used as a nickname. [10] IRL received critical acclaim and was included on best-of-the-year lists for 2016. [11] [12] In 2017, it received the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. [13]
Pico's second book, Nature Poem was published in 2017 by Tin House. Nature Poem, like IRL, was written from the perspective of Pico's alter ego and fictional character, Teebs. [14] Pico again used the epic format, in this case to explore and challenge stereotypes of Native Americans as "noble savages" who are one with nature. [15] Nature Poem also received critical acclaim. [16] [17] [18] Pico followed Nature Poem with Junk in 2018 and Feed in 2019. Pico considers his four books as a series called the "Teebs tetralogy". [19] [20]
Pico co-curates the live reading series Poets With Attitude with Morgan Parker, [21] and he is the co-host of the podcast Food 4 Thot , a podcast about queer identity, race, sex, relationships, literature, and pop culture. He is also the co-host of the podcast Scream, Queen! with Drea Washington. Scream, Queen discusses marginalized people and horror films. [20] [22] He also appears in the 2022 documentary series Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror . [23]
In 2018, Pico was commissioned to create soundscapes for New York City's High Line park and a walking tour of Seattle for Vignettes Gallery and Gramma Press. [20]
He has written for TV shows including Reservation Dogs and Resident Alien . [24] Pico was chosen as a 2021 Sundance Institute Fellow. [24] [25]
In 2017, Pico's debut IRL received the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. [13] his second book, Nature Poem, was the winner of a 2018 American Book Award and finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award. He was a 2018 Whiting Award Winner for poetry. [2]
Eileen Myles is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature." The Boston Globe described them as "that rare creature, a rock star of poetry." In 2012, Myles received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow, which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog's life. Myles uses they/them pronouns.
Tin House is an American book publisher based in Portland, Oregon, and New York City.
Emanuel Xavier, is an American poet, spoken word artist, author, editor, and LGBTQ activist born and raised in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. Associated with the East Village, Manhattan arts scene in New York City, he emerged from the ball culture scene and the Nuyorican movement to become a successful poet, writer and advocate for gay youth programs and Latino gay literature.
Jordie Albiston was an Australian poet.
Pamela Sneed is an American poet, performance artist, actress, activist, and teacher. Her book, Funeral Diva, is a memoir in poetry and prose about growing up during the AIDS crisis, and the winner of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry.
Dan Chiasson is an American poet, critic, and journalist. The Sewanee Review called Chiasson "the country’s most visible poet-critic." He is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English Literature at Wellesley College.
Bianca Stone is a Brooklyn based poet and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines and poetry collections, and her illustrations are a part of Anne Carson's project, Antigonick.
Jenny Zhang is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based in Brooklyn, New York. One focus of her work is on the Chinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States. She has published a collection of poetry called Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fiction chapbook called Hags. From 2011 to 2014, Zhang wrote extensively for Rookie. Additionally, Zhang has worked as a freelance essayist for other publications. In August 2017, Zhang's short story collection, Sour Heart, was the first acquisition by Lena Dunham's Lenny imprint, Lenny Books, via Random House.
Morgan Parker is an American poet, novelist, and editor. She is the author of poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also author of the young adult novel, Who Put This Song On.
Danez Smith is a poet, writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are queer, non-binary and HIV-positive. They are the author of the poetry collections [insert] Boy and Don't Call Us Dead: Poems, both of which have received multiple awards. Their most recent poetry collection Homie was published on January 21, 2020.
Saeed Jones is an American writer and poet. His debut collection Prelude to Bruise was named a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. His second book, a memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2019.
Hanif Abdurraqib is an American poet, essayist, and cultural critic. His first essay collection, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was published in 2017. His 2021 essay collection A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance received the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Abdurraqib was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021.
Ellen van Neerven is an Aboriginal Australian writer, educator and editor. They are queer and non-binary. Their first work of fiction, Heat and Light (2013), won several awards, and in 2019 Van Neerven won the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers Award. Their second collection of poetry, Throat (2020), won three awards at the 2021 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, including Book of the Year.
Melissa Broder is an author, essayist and poet. Her work includes the novels The Pisces and Milk Fed, the poetry collection Last Sext, and the essay collection So Sad Today, as well as the Twitter feed also titled So Sad Today, on which the book is based. Broder has written for The New York Times, Elle, Vice, Vogue Italia, and New York magazine‘s The Cut.
Kai Cheng Thom is a Canadian writer and former social worker. Thom, a non-binary trans woman, has published four books, including the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir (2016), the poetry collection a place called No Homeland (2017), a children's book, From the Stars in The Sky to the Fish in the Sea (2017), and I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World (2019), a book of essays centered on transformative justice.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is a poet, scholar, and author from the Driftpile Cree Nation.
Patrick Rosal is a Filipino American poet and essayist.
Raquel Salas Rivera is a bilingual Puerto Rican poet who writes in Spanish and English, focusing on the experience of being a migrant to the United States, the colonial status of Puerto Rico, and of identifying as a queer Puerto Rican and Philadelphian of non-binary gender. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania and was selected as the fourth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2018. He currently lives in Puerto Rico.
Food 4 Thot is an LGBT podcast hosted by Tommy Pico, Denne Michele Norris, Joseph Osmundson, and Fran Tirado. The podcast is described as, "A multiracial mix of queer writers talk about sex, relationships, race, identity, what we like to read, and who we like to read."
Nature Poem is a book-length poem written by Tommy Pico, a Native American poet born and raised on Viejas Indian Reservation of Kumeyaay nation. It was published by Tin House in 2017. It was preceded by the publication of IRL (2016), followed by both Junk (2018) and Feed (2019). Nature Poem was written in first-person narration following the character Teebs, a queer “NDN”. Teebs is a fictional character, and a development of Pico’s alter-ego and performance persona. Teebs confronts the stereotypes put upon him by white colonialism, such as Indian Americans' association with nature, by refusing to write a nature poem.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
