Born and raised in Los Angeles, Raquel Gutiérrez is a critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator. Raquel’s first book, Brown Neon (Coffee House Press), was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and listed in The Best Art Books of 2022 by Hyperallergic. They have a poetry manuscript under contract with Noemi Press and work on a range of topics that have continued to inform their writing and teaching, including critical race theory, Queer and Latinx aesthetics, and performance art in the Americas.
Raquel has recently published in Places Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, Art in America, and The Georgia Review. Prior to joining Antioch, Raquel taught in the OSU Cascades Low Residency MFA Program, Temple University, UC Riverside, and the University of Arizona. They currently mentor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, and the University of Nevada Reno in their Interdisciplinary Arts Low Residency MFA program. Raquel lives in Tucson with their spouse and their dog, Lalo.
- MFA, University of Arizona, Poetry & Nonfiction
- MA, New York University, Performance Studies
- BA, California State University Northridge, Journalism & Central American Studies
As an artist and writer, I gravitate towards texts that question identity, place, and the way language both illuminates and obscures history. I bring these inquiries into the classroom and encourage students to share their relationship to language and to the dynamic of power that animates these relationships. This makes teaching a rewarding and relevant endeavor that I couldn’t experience otherwise.
Prior to my time in the academy I trained with a community arts organization in Los Angeles to be a workshop facilitator. I have facilitated up to 200 people in one gathering to discuss the inequities that shape the contemporary art systems of Los Angeles. These experiences enable me to be a dynamic educator capable of reading a room with diverse constituents eager to share their opinions and researched observations. I continue to draw upon these experiences to serve me as a teacher in the classroom where I employ well-honed active listening and conflict resolution skills to create an environment that is both respectful and exciting in enacting dialogue and robust learning.
As a queer, trans-masculine non-binary Latinx person of color I feel the urgent call to address power differentials in the classroom and cite examples from my own life to underscore the significance of language, so students might explore how they are constituted by language. I think classroom conversations are invigorated by texts by diverse scholars, artists, and activists in order to create a healthy writing community among myself and my students. My hope is that exposure paired with written reflection and discussion allows students to navigate their own perspectives within a larger social framework.
- Brown Neon was a 2023 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize for Best Lesbian Biography/Memoir,
- 2023 Finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ Firework Award in Creative Nonfiction
- Recipient of The Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction.
- Recipient of the Rabkin Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, 2021
- Recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, 2017