Writers on Writing: Tongo Eisen-Martin

Tongo Eisen-Martin

Born in San Francisco, Eisen-Martin is a movement worker, educator and poet who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of African Americans throughout the United States. He has educated in detention centers from New York’s Rikers Island to California’s San Quentin State Prison. Eisen-Martin was adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies. Subscribing to the Freirian model of education, he designed curricula for oppressed people’s education projects from San Francisco to South Africa. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of African Americans, “We Charge Genocide Again,” has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. He uses his craft to create liberated territory wherever he performs and teaches.

Writers on Writing

The Creative Writing Department opens its Writers on Writing course to the public every semester. Taught by Dodie Bellamy, the course features faculty and visiting writers reading from their works and discussing their creative process.