Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, illustration courtesy of the artist.
Join us for a boundary-pushing evening of experimental poetry and prose at this Literary Cabaret, sharing works from the Computational Writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Across three nights, explore writing that is at once strangely familiar and radically new, created and performed by participants and faculty mentors.
This one-and-a-half-week residency unites writers and artists interrogating how technology, code, and artificial intelligence can be used as ethical, creative tools for producing new poetry and prose. The goal isn’t to replace human creativity, but to reimagine authorship, language, and form through collaboration with machines.
This chapter is hosted by Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, a groundbreaking poet and visual artist. They’re the author of Travesty Generator, a book of computational poetry longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for poetry.
Enjoy a drink from the bar and immerse yourself in a playful literary setting. Doors open at 6:15 p.m., with readings starting at 7 p.m. Afterward, mingle with the writers and faculty until 9:30 p.m.
Don’t miss this chance to discover poems generated by algorithms, stories shaped by code, and more.
Literary Arts is generously supported by the Flanagan Foundation and Fondation David R. Graham.
About Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their most recent full length poetry book, Negative Money, was published in 2023. Their chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland and are a 2024 Foundation for Contemporary Arts poetry grant recipient and 2024 Deutsch Foundation Ruby’s Grant recipient. They are co-editor with Nick Montfort of the recently released anthology Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023.