Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Worldbuilding as Future: Creolizing The Ruins of Modernity

Wed, April 3, 2024
Dinner Program
Fabrice Guerrier

How do we imagine the future in the context of addressing, navigating, and transforming environmental, social, and cultural challenges, seeking innovative ways to create inclusive and sustainable futures? Join sci-fi and fantasy publishing visionary Fabrice Guerrier on an exploration of worldbuilding in fiction and imagination. By embracing the notion of 'creolization,' Guerrier will investigate how the blending of diverse cultural, intellectual, and social elements can forge new, resilient pathways for humanity.

Fabrice j. Guerrier is the award-winning founder of Syllble Studios, a pioneering sci-fi and fantasy production and publishing house that develops diverse writing talent through collaborative worldbuilding. At Syllble, Guerrier leads a radically new process of creating unique fictional worlds by connecting underrepresented creative writers, visual artists and inspired creators from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures through artist collectives. Drawing from his cultural heritage and his interests in syncretism, creolization, Haitian futurism, African spiritual traditions, and worldbuilding, Guerrier's science-fantasy shared-world "Ayitiverse" aims to unraveled the universal history of the world’s first modern Black nation, Haiti.

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1991, Guerrier moved to the United States at the young age of 13 in 2004. He holds a Bachelor’s in International Affairs and a Leadership Studies Certificate from Florida State University, as well as a Master’s in Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP). While at CJP, he helped found a local chapter of Coming to the Table (CTTT), a national racial reconciliation organization founded by descendants of the enslaved and enslavers from the same plantation in the United States. He then went on to become the youngest national president of CTTT's board of directors.

Guerrier’s TED Talk, “Gone are the days of the lone genius,” illuminates future transformation and the need for collective thinking. He is the author of No More Vagabonds, No More Obscure Wars: Poems (2023), Medusa’s Descendant (2023), Breaking Free From Mass-Produced Consciousness: A Little Book for Artists, Entrepreneurs, and the Leaders of Tomorrow (2021) and Golden Veins: A Collection Of Stories (2019). He was selected as a 2022 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow finalist and a PEN Haiti Fellow by PEN America. Guerrier was inducted into Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Art & Style and named to The Root Magazine‘s 100 Most Influential African-Americans. He lives in Los Angeles, CA. 

Guerrier will deliver the 2024 Golo Mann Lecture, sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

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