Discipline/Field: Fiction
Based in: Atascadero, CA
About: Tasia Trevino is a writer and musician who holds a BA in History from UCLA and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She works as an editor for social studies curriculum used in public schools across the country. As a California Writing Resident, she will finish a noir novel set in Los Angeles and a fictionalized agricultural county based on the San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys. The novel explores how the tropes and assumptions of the genre can be reversed or refuted while still working within its structures.
Project Title: Salsipuedes brings together the consistent themes of Trevino’s work: California history, inheritance, ownership, identity, land, water, politics, power, punk rock/ the d.i.y. music world, the occult, her family’s Chicano and Okie heritage, and the manifold kinds of violence in the West. The novel form is guided by dissemination of information, the formation of accepted narratives, and who controls both of those things (and why).