Mixed Remixed Festival

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Mixed Remixed Festival 2017 Presenter Highlight: Writer May-lee Chai

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We are extremely pleased to have writer May-lee Chai as part of our Featured Writers Reading.  You can hear her read on June 10, 2017 at 1:00pm at the Mixed Remixed Festival.  Pre-registration is strongly encouraged. 

R E G I S T E R

What are you?
Mixed-race Asian-American, specifically Chinese-Anglo/Irish/German.

What is your mixed experience?

I am biracial, daughter of a Chinese father and White Irish-Anglo-German American mother.

What is the most important thing you want people to know about the mixed experience?

We are not half anything, we are wholly ourselves. Our families have a right to exist and we have a right to celebrate our existence and to see our families represented in American culture in a positive way through a non-racist lens.

 

“We are not half anything, we are wholly ourselves.” @mayleechai #mixedrace #multiracial

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Do you remember when you first started thinking about the mixed experience? Was it because of a certain moment or event? Please tell us about that.

I had to think about the mixed experience for survival’s sake when I was 12 and we moved from the NYC-area to rural South Dakota and people started driving by our house to stare at us, shout racial slurs, and eventually to shoot and kill our dogs. I had to assert my right to exist when monoracial adults and their children told me God didn’t want the races to mix and that I by my existence was a sign of the “End Times” and Satan’s reign on earth. I learned to insist upon my family’s right to exist and our right to be represented in American culture in a positive light rather than through the lens of racism.

multiracial, mixed race, mixed-race, interracial family, biracial, growing up biracial, hapaIs this your first time attending the Mixed Remixed Festival?

Yes

Why did you want to be a part of the Mixed Remixed Festival? What do you hope to gain?
I want to represent my family, I want to tell my story, I want to meet other mixed-race writers and artists and families.

 

What are you looking forward to most at the Festival this year?

Meeting everyone and hearing all the stories!

Mixed Remixed Festival 2017 Presenter Highlight: Poet Julian Randall

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“I think like a lot of Biracial people I’m defined by droughts and mirrors.”

We are extremely pleased to have poet Julian Randall as part of our Featured Writers Reading.  You can hear him read on June 10, 2017 at 1:00pm at the Mixed Remixed Festival.  Pre-registration is strongly encouraged. 

R E G I S T E R

What are you?
I am a Biracial Black Queer man
I am half Afro-Dominican and half of what you could call Afro-American Black, though America has rarely if ever wanted anything to do with me and I allow it proximity to my name only for the sake of clarity.

What is your mixed experience?

I think like a lot of Biracial people I’m defined by droughts and mirrors. In essence I am what it is to come from two impossible bloodlines and still find your face nowhere. As such I had to piece together my identity in bits and pieces, different hour blocks on the tv, different books, eternally just in heated pursuit of some proof I was possible beyond my own body. I’m a writer because of the skills that I learned in my hunger, I’m in many ways in the business of mosaics (of building a face from the shrapnel of other times) I come from so much that American culture throws away off screen, but I’m here, I’m back, and in so many ways, I never left.

“I am a biracial black queer man . . . I come from so much that American culture throws away off screen.” @julianthepoet #mixedrace #multiracial

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What is the most important thing you want people to know about the mixed experience?

I want folks to know I do not exist by accident. When I say, “I come from the impossible” I mean that one half of my family was chained and placed on a boat, then eventually landed in Mississippi, then eventually I had a great grandfather who was born light skinned and with no record of his real birthday. He owned part of a hardware store and sold insurance. One day the white folk of Greenville, MS came to his business after discovering that he was not white; they gave him 24 hours or he would be tarred and feathered to death. He carried my grandmother and fled to East St. Louis. She grew up to meet my grandfather, they had my father. This was not an accident, it was violence.

Similarly my abuelo, my mother’s father, was a loudmouth opponent of the US supported Trujillo Regime. Trujillo’s thugs started asking around about my Abuelo. And so one half of my blood mounted a plane and landed in New York to save the women who would become my Tias, become my mother. This was not an accident, it was violence.

Make no mistake, without violence I do not exist. My parents could not have existed anywhere but at the edge of a blade and so I am from “the impossible” a descendant of what Ariana Brown so aptly calls “The Unsurvivable”

“Make no mistake, without violence I do not exist.” @julianthepoet #mixedrace #multiracial

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Do you remember when you first started thinking about the mixed experience? Was it because of a certain moment or event? Please tell us about that.

Well, I guess I want to say here that in my memory it is twofold, there’s the moment where you see what you are and the moment that other people confirm they see it too. So it’s about gaze in that respect. Mine actually centers around the year 2001 when both Taina and That’s So Raven were on TV around the same time. It might seem silly to some but at age 7 I was so grateful to know I wasn’t alone, they may have been on separate channels but here was the time I most easily was able to see families that looked like mine though they could never touch. It was really nice, and they were images I had found on my own.

It was strange though too. I went to a predominantly white school where I was not reflected in a lot of ways. People didn’t really know often, what to do with me, what to call me and it led to a lot of microaggressive events from the jaws of the well-intentioned. A lot of folks would substitute/code the “Which side do you feel closer to?” question as “Well which show do you like more; Raven or Taina?” and so I knew that they saw this supposed line down the middle of me too. This line that none of them had to bear, this other way that it was a burden to remember me, to hold me all in one place.

When Taina got cancelled I was devastated, at the surface level because it was a great show but really I think I knew then what I would be told again and again, there could only be one. I was already two, so it seemed there could be no me.

On the lack of images of mixed-race TV characters: “It seemed there could be no me.” @julianthepoet #mixedrace #multiracial

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Is this your first time attending the Mixed Remixed Festival?

Yes

Why did you want to be a part of the Mixed Remixed Festival? What do you hope to gain?

I’m not sure how many more times I can say mirrors before it seems like I only know 6 words. But it is important, to know oneself within the company of people who bear some version of our own particular histories, the spaces that can feel barren for want of a friend, a contact, somebody who is built of similar improbabilities

What are you looking forward to most at the Festival this year?

I couldn’t have imagined I would ever get a chance to do a reading with Tara Betts who was one of my teachers at The Watering Hole and a hero, friend and advocate I hold in highest esteem and love. So I am excited to be in LA for the first time to do such holy work as reading with my fellow featured writers!

2015 Festival Re-cap: Writing Fiction with Jamie Ford

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_DSC9991The talented and funny and extremely engaging writer Jamie Ford was a huge draw at the Mixed Remixed Festival 2015.  He was one of our Storyteller’s Prize honorees and also read as part of the featured writers program and taught a workshop in the morning that was at-capacity.  We are super excited to say unofficially that Jamie Ford will join us again next year.  So if you didn’t get a chance to hear him speak, or meet him, or get him to sign books, well you have another chance!  Thanks Jamie for all of your amazing work and for just being you! – Heidi Durrow, Festival Founder

The amazing @jamieford rocked the Mixed Remixed Festival & will do it again! #multiracial #mixedrace

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Presenter Spotlight 2015: Writer Marie Mockett

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m-mockett

Featured Writers Reading

June 13, 2015 3pm-5pm 

Register

Marie Mockett was born and raised in California to a Japanese mother and American  father, and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian  Languages and Civilizations. Her first novel, Picking Bones from Ash, was  shortlisted for the Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a finalist for  the Paterson Prize. She has written for The New York Times, Salon, National  Geographic, Glamour, and other publications and has been a guest on Talk of  the Nation and All Things Considered on NPR.

Mixed Remixed FestivalIn 2013, Marie was awarded a  Fellowship by the NEA and Japan US Friendship Commission, which enabled  her to live in Japan. While there, she was featured in the NHK (Japanese  National Broadcasting) Documentary, Venerating the Departed, which was  broadcast internationally several times. Her memoir, “Where the Dead Pause,  and the Japanese Say Goodbye,” was published in January 19, 2015 and examines how the Japanese overcome extreme grief and disaster, against the backdrop of the 2011 tsunami and Marie’s own family temple in Japan, located 25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Reactor.

“Where the Dead Pause” as been widely praised by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, and has been chosen as an Indie Next Pick, a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Of her book, the New York Times wrote: “An intriguing… travelogue through a landscape of Japanese spiritual belief, with forays into history, folklore, and memoir. [Mockett] has the ability, fully available only to those on the margins, “to see through more than one set of eyes, if one learns to pay attention to one’s environment.” It is this gift of double-sightedness, of bringing to bear both the “dry” rationality of the West and the “sticky” sensibilities professed by the Japanese, that makes this the most interesting book so far to have come out of the disaster.” (Richard Lloyd Parry – New York Times Book Review)where-the-dead-pause-mockett

The awesome @MarieMockett reads at Mixed Remixed 6/13 FREE! #hapa #multiracial

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Marie online:

Twitter     @MarieMockett

Website    http://www.mariemockett.com/ 

By Keri Wilborn

Presenter Spotlight 2015: Writer Mat Johnson

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Mat Johnson

Panel: What’s So Funny About Being Mixed?, Tateuchi Democracy Forum, June 13, 2015 1:00pm-2:20pm

Featured Writers Reading , Araki Community Education Center, June 13, 2015 3:00pm-4:00pm

Mat JohnsonMat Johnson is the author of the novels Loving Day, Pym, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a recipient of the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Mat Johnson is a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. His most recent novel Loving Day was released in May 2015.Mixed Remixed FestivalLoving Day Mixed Remixed Festival

 

 

 

 

The awesome @mat_johnson reads from Loving Day 6/13! FREE! #multiracial

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Mat Johnson on-line:

Twitter: @mat_johnson

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matjohnsonpage

Website: matjohnson.info

Presenter Spotlight 2015: Poet James Tyner

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jamestyner

Featured Writers Reading

June 13, 2015 3pm-5pm 

 

Register

 

 

Chicano and Caucasian, James Tyner  grew up in Los Angeles and in Fresno, California. His awards include the 2008 Coal Hill Review chapbook contest, the Larry Levis poetry prize, the Ernesto Trejo Poetry Prize, and the Andres Montoya Scholarship. He has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Working Poet, New America, and the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. His poems “At a Barbeque for R.C.” and “After the Artichoke Harvest” were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.  Tyner is Fresno, California’s first poet laureate.

tyner

Mixed Remixed FestivalJames online: 

Facebook:      facebook.com/fresnocapoetlaureate

MIXED-RACE AND MULTIRACIAL AMERICANS CELEBRATE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Heidi Durrow
Phone: 213-293-7077
Email: heidi@mixedremixed.org
Website: www.mixedremixed.org
Twitter: @mixedremixed
Instagram: mixedremixed
#mixedremixed

MIXED-RACE AND MULTIRACIAL AMERICANS CELEBRATE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

LOS ANGELES, CA– The Mixed Remixed Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of mixed-race and multiracial families and people, will take place at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles (514 S. Spring Street), Saturday June 10, 2017.

The Festival celebrates stories of multiracial Americans and families, the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. This year the Festival–now in its fourth year–celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that allowed people of different races to marry nationwide.

A free public event, the Festival brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial and multicultural families and individuals for workshops, readings, performances, and film screenings and family activities.

The Mixed Remixed Festival attracted close to 1,000 people from across the country last year and featured dozens of writers, scholars and performers including TV and film star Taye Diggs. The Festival, a non-profit arts organization — is produced by The New York Times best-selling writer, Heidi Durrow, and a talented team of entertainment professionals and artists.

“We are excited to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Loving and the diversity of our stories,” says Durrow, who calls herself an Afro-Viking because she is African-American and Danish. “The Loving anniversary and the Festival are important reminders that the mixed-race experience is very much the American experience.  For our attendees, it’s a place where they can feel less alone.  Many people say it feels like coming home for the first time.”

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is strongly encouraged. The complete Festival schedule can be found online at www.mixedremixed.org.

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

  • The Festival hosts the largest West Coast Loving Day Celebration, Saturday, June 10, 2017, at 6:30 p.m. with the annual Storyteller’s Prize presentation and live show. The Festival will present the Storyteller’s Prize to multiple Golden Globe and Emmy nominated actor and producer David Oyelowo (Selma/A United Kingdom) as part of a dynamic live show featuring comedians and performers Tehran, Sunda Croonquist, Joe Hernandez-Kolski, Joshua Silverstein and Kayla Briet and produced and directed by Rayme Cornell.
  • Families can enjoy interactive craft activities, free face-painting and storytelling events led by the beloved Santa Monica bookstore, Books and Cookies, as part of the Festival’s family activities.
  • The Festival will feature a special program hosted by 23andMe showcasing a family for whom the Loving v. Virginia decision came too late. Recently, a young law student in Virginia, Katrina Callsen, uncovered her own side of the story, with the help of modern science – a genetic test from 23andMe. Katrina and her father share her discovery and the ripple effect it’s had on the family. Serein Wu, a popular lifestyle blogger, will moderate the discussion.
  • The Festival will present several notable short films including the award-winning Silences (dir. Octavio Warnock-Graham). Immediately following all the screenings there will be Q & A with the filmmakers and scholar-led discussions that connect a humanities perspective to contemporary storytellers’ work.
  • The Festival includes author readings by New York Times bestselling-author Julie Lythcott-Haims (How To Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap And Prepare Your Kid for Success, and the forthcoming memoir Real American), award-winning writer May-lee Chai, poet Tara Betts who is the co-editor of the forthcoming The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century (2 Leaf Press) and many others.
  • More than a dozen esteemed panelists will speak on diverse topics related to the mixed-race and multicultural experience, including one of the youngest TED Fellows, musician/filmmaker Kayla Briet; Tehran, comedian and host of the popular shows Comedy Bazaar and All-Star Comedy at The Laugh Factory, and professional actor and Master Teacher Rayme Cornell.
  • Band of Vices, a popular art gallery and collective, will exhibit a dozen new works in the Festival’s Grand Lobby as well.

Festival sponsors and funders include: 23andMe, Mixed Chicks, Buntoppers, Final Draft, Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill, the Leo Buscaglia Foundation, the Puffin West Foundation, and Poets & Writers through grants it has received from the Irvine Foundation and the Hearst Foundations. This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of California Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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FESTIVAL CELEBRATING MIXED-RACE FAMILIES REVEALS 2017 SCHEDULE

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mixed race, multiracial, biracialFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Heidi Durrow

Phone: 213-293-7077

Email: heidi@mixedremixed.org

Website: www.mixedremixed.org

Twitter: @mixedremixed

Instagram: mixedremixed

#mixedremixed

 

FESTIVAL CELEBRATING MIXED-RACE FAMILIES REVEALS 2017 SCHEDULE

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 08, 2017 — The Mixed Remixed Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of mixed-race and multiracial families and people, will take place at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles (514 S. Spring Street), June 10, 2017.

The Festival celebrates stories of multiracial Americans and families, the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. A free public event, the Festival brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial and multicultural families and individuals for workshops, readings, performances, and film screenings.

The Mixed Remixed Festival attracted close to 1,000 people from across the country last year and featured dozens of writers, scholars and performers including TV and film star Taye Diggs. This year the Festival–now in its fourth year–celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that allowed people of different races to marry nationwide.

The Festival, a non-profit arts organization — is produced by The New York Times best-selling writer, Heidi Durrow, and a talented team of entertainment professionals and artists.

“It’s exciting to finally see mixed people and families in mainstream media and to connect with each other on-line,” says Durrow, who calls herself an Afro-Viking because she is African-American and Danish. “But the Festival is the only nationwide cultural arts event where we get to meet each other and share stories.”

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is now open. The complete Festival schedule can be found online at www.mixedremixed.org.

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

  • The Festival hosts the largest West Coast Loving Day Celebration, Saturday, June 10, 2017, at 6:30 p.m. with the annual Storyteller’s Prize presentation and live show. The Festival will present the Storyteller’s Prize to film star David Oyelowo as part of a dynamic live show featuring comedians, musicians and spoken-word poets.

 

  • Families can enjoy interactive craft activities, free face-painting and storytelling events led by the beloved Santa Monica bookstore, Books and Cookies, as part of the family activities.

 

  • The Festival will feature a special program featuring a family for whom the Loving decision came too late. Recently, a young law student in Virginia, Katrina Callsen, uncovered her own side of the story, with the help of modern science – a genetic test from 23andMe. Katrina and her father share her discovery and the ripple effect it’s had on the family.

 

  • The Festival will present several notable short films including the award-winning Silences (dir. Octavio Warnock-Graham). Immediately following all the screenings there will be Q & A with the filmmakers and scholar-led discussions that connect a humanities perspective to contemporary storytellers’ work.

 

  • The Festival includes author readings by New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims (How To Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap And Prepare Your Kid for Success, and the forthcoming memoir Real American) and award-winning writer May-lee Chai and many others.

 

  • More than a dozen esteemed panelists will speak on diverse topics related to the mixed-race and multicultural experience, including one of the youngest TED Fellows, musician/filmmaker Kayla Briet; and Tehran, comedian and host of the popular shows Comedy Bazaar and All-Star Comedy at The Laugh Factory.

Festival sponsors and funders include: 23andMe, Mixed Chicks, Buntoppers, Final Draft, Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill, Six Flags, the Leo Buscaglia Foundation, and the Puffin West Foundation. This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of California Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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2017 Mixed Remixed Festival Schedule

4th Annual Mixed Remixed Festival

Los Angeles Theatre Center

514 S. Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA

FREE! Registration strongly encouraged!

 

THANK YOU ALL FOR JOINING US AT THE 4TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL!
STAY TUNED FOR DETAILS ABOUT FALL EVENTS 2017 AND 2018!
 
Learn more about each program by clicking on the links below.
You can download a Festival schedule as a pdf or by pressing the button below.
 
 

Doors Open 9:30am

Doors Close 9:00pm

 
TimeTheater 2Theater 4Grand Lobby
10:00 AM - 10:50 AMInterracial Relationships in Films: 50 Years After Loving v. VirginiaMixed Voices: Get Yours Out There! An Interactive Storytelling WorkshopFamily Fun: Storytime with Books and Cookies; Free Face Painting; Craft Activities (10am-4pm)
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM23andMe Brings to Light History’s Impact on Today’s Families
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM BREAKBREAK
1:00 PM - 2:45 PMWhat Are We? in Films:
Mixed Race and Multiracial Identity 50 Years After Loving v. Virginia		 Featured Writers Reading
2:45 PM - 3:00 PMBREAKBREAK
3:00 PM - 4:30 PMThe Mixed-Race Conversation: Is It a Wrap?On Bullying and The Race Talk: How to Support Your Mixed Kid
4:30 PM - 5:30 PMBREAKBREAK
5:30 PM - 6:15 PMLoving Day Wine & Cheese Reception FREE!
6:15 PMDoors Open
6:30 PM - 7:45 PMStoryteller's Prize Presentation & Live Event
8:00 PM - 9:00 PMDessert Reception FREE!
 

How Mixed Remixed has Helped Me on My Mixed Journey and My Writing Journey

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Growing up, I was raised in a home where I was allowed to process what it meant for me to be mixed; especially since a mixed race single mother has primarily raised me. However, I haven’t seen a lot of representation of mixed race people in the sense of being generationally mixed, and I haven’t seen a lot of spaces where people can process their mixedness outside of their households.

I related and didn’t relate at the same time to articles, and popular TV and film characters that identified as biracial due to having monoracial parents of different races. Other than through poetry, I didn’t know how to externally process how difficult it has been for me to engage in conversations about racial identity as someone who identifies as generationally multiracial.

I haven’t seen a lot of representation of mixed race people in the sense of being generationally mixed, and I haven’t seen a lot of spaces where people can process their mixedness outside of their households.

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From left to right, my sister Danielle, me, and my sister JC

After reading an article from Vox about things people needed to know about being biracial, and noticing how one of the points included the inclusion for generationally mixed, I became excited, and started Googling more on the topic.

Two search pages over came a quote from Misty Copeland that was on the Mixed Remixed Festival’s site. I became even more ecstatic!

After reading through the festival’s celebrity quote page for a bit, I read more about the site. The Mixed Remixed festival prepared for a huge event every year catering to various multiracial people’s stories, interracial couples’ stories, and even transracial families’ stories; on that note, it was nice to see the word “transracial” used properly in a non-Rachel Dolezal context.

Whether you had mixed race children as a monoracial person, whether you were of two or more races, whether you were generationally mixed, you had a place there in person at the festival, and online on their social media platforms.

I followed them on Twitter and Facebook immediately.

I didn’t even think anyone from Mixed Remixed’s staff would respond to my tweets, either, but I’m so glad they did. I tweeted them asking if they were able to find articles about someone mixed similar to my mixed identity. I tweeted them thanking them for such an awesome platform. I tweeted them questions they asked about favorite movies that has mixed race characters, and other things along the lines of that.

What I did not expect to tweet at them was something from my blog.

I don’t remember if it was prose, a poem, or a short story, but I do remember tweeting something. And a bit afterwards, I got a tweet back from them that stated, “Keep writing!”

And I totally did.

I haven’t written things often about what it meant to be mixed race in my work until interacting with the Mixed Remixed Festival. A piece of writing that gained the most feedback was a poem I wrote about what dating is like for mixed race women, particularly for me as a mixed race woman. Not only was I still writing on my blog, but I also submitted my poems and short stories about mixed race experiences for my university’s publications, and those have been well received.

It pushed me to hone my writing that would make people discussed mixed race people and mixed race identity. It eventually encouraged me to participate in video projects, such as my university’s #ECUWithoutMe campaign, and the 100% Mixed Show’s #Mixstory campaign.

I haven’t written things often about what it meant to be mixed race in my work until interacting with the Mixed Remixed Festival.

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More and more people were starting to hear my story, and most people have actually given me positive feedback for it. It was so refreshing; I didn’t expect any of that to happen!

So, what was next?

I was unsure of whether or not I would get in, but I submitted an application to be a panelist at the Mixed Remixed Festival for June 2016. After I sent my application, I kept thinking, “Oh, I probably won’t be accepted. There are published, more successful writers who are on their panels, there’s no way they’re going to accept me.” I wasn’t a “real” writer, whatever that meant.

Whether I was going to be a panelist or not, I was still going to go. Whether I was going to be a panelist or not, I was not going to miss out on this opportunity.

I wasn’t a “real” writer, whatever that meant.

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Then, I started focusing my energy on applying for my summer internship with Hillside Missions. When I got accepted, I still didn’t know my starting date, but since I didn’t hear back from Mixed Remixed yet, I thought, “Hey, it shouldn’t be a big deal, I probably won’t be accepted as a panelist.”

“I’m not a ‘real’ writer.”

I assume you know where this is going.

March came along…and I got selected to be a panelist for the Mixed Millennials panel!

Ahhhhh!!!

That’s right! I was a real writer. No, I AM a real writer!

Wait…when was I starting my internship? Where was I going to stay? How was I going to get there? How long would I be able to stay?

As excited as I was to get that email, I had to email back to say that I needed a few days to gather everything before I sent a confirmation.

I contacted my internship’s office, and was able to start on time and attend the festival. I was able to stay with a cousin. Although I was going to pay for two online classes for the summer, I paid for one so that I could pay for my plane ticket. And although I was only able to make it for the second part of the festival so that I didn’t miss my sister’s graduation vacation, I was still able to be a panelist and experience what the festival was like.

I'm a panelist! Whoo hoo!

From left to right, me, multidisciplinary artist Via Perkins, and founders of Mixed Race Politics N. Laurence and Andrea Venkatesan

Out of all the things that could have brought me to California for the first time, the Mixed Remixed Festival did that, and I am so glad and proud that it did.

Because the festival has helped me grow so much, I was able to become a writer for an online medium called The Tempest, and was able to write pieces about my mixed experiences.

I continue to find new ways to contribute pieces about being generationally mixed.

I have been able to focus my social work research on the mixed experience in my undergrad.

I intend to apply as a panelist and a spoken word performer for 2017’s Mixed Remixed Festival, and I am now a blogger for the Mixed Remixed Festival.

It has been such a blessing to be a part of a platform that has helped me grow and become more vocal as a Black, White, and Native American second generation mixed woman.

I’m looking forward to see what’s to happen next!

—Maya Williams, Blogger for the Festival

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