blake nemec

blake nemec is a writer, teacher and healthcare worker who lives in Chicago. Sharing Plastic is his hybrid poetry and fiction debut, and his work has been featured in situations such as SoundWeb, New Orleans Poetry Festival, MIRAGE #5/PERIOD(ICAL), JUPITER 88, the Red Rover Reading Series, the San Francisco Queer Arts Performance Festival and anti-assimilationist or abolition anthologies such as Captive Genders; Transembodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex. He received an MFA in bilingual (Spanish and English) poetry/fiction from the University of Texas at El Paso and is a Sante Fe Art Institute & Lambda Literary Fellow. He has long worked as a sound recordist in independent movies, such as the documentary FREE CeCE! His writing and sound performances work to reveal the extraordinary musicality of everyday conversations by unprotected workers, pansexuals, and gender variant people.

 

His healthcare work began in the 90’s when he was working as a CNA, then personal assistant for folks with disabilities. His obsessions on body-based intelligences weave through his different healthcare work, whether that has been as a phlebotomist, HIV/STI counselor, or medical interpreter. 

 

(in honor of Barbara Barg and her bios) blake nemec has worked. In no particular order, he has been a maid, HIV STI tester, telemarketer of garbage bags, tutor, abortion canvasser, interpreter, KFC cashier, AV event tech, butler, personal shopper, shoe seller, sheep herder, sound recorder, waiter, copy-writer, cook, proofreader, a pro-domme, factory worker, adjunct, pot trimmer, massage worker, and phlebotomist.