From Published Works, From lost and found

Keeper of the Archive: Lois Elaine Griffith

Name: Keeper of the Archive: Lois Elaine Griffith
SKU: 72807
Availability: InStock

$10.00

As the keeper of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s archive, Lois Elaine Griffith always advocates for “remembering those whose shoulders we stand upon.” Focusing on Griffith’s archival practices, Keeper of the Archive places archival artifacts alongside transcriptions of oral histories found in Griffith’s papers that highlight important figures missing from current scholarship on the Cafe’s legacy: poet and costume designer Marcel Christian and photographers Arlene Gottfried and Tony Gleaton. Keeper of the Archive is part of Lost & Found Series X dedicated to the work Lois Elaine Griffith and is edited by Lost & Found scholar and archival collaborator Joseph Anthony Cáceres.

ISBN: 978-1-958675-07-6
Pages: 53
Copyright Lois Elaine Griffith. Courtesy of Lois Elaine Griffith’s papers.
Saddle stitch, French archival paper

See images from Keeper of the Archive below:

Lois Elaine Griffith and Joseph Anthony Cáceres Bios

Joseph Anthony Cáceres and Lois Elaine Griffith. Photo credit: John Sarsgard, 2024.

Lois Elaine Griffith is a visual and literary artist of West Indian descent. For 23 years she was professor of English at CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College. As one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, after retiring from the day-to-day business of producing at the Cafe, she established the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project dedicated to the documentation, collection and presentation of evidence of cultural expressions produced at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the latter part of the 20th century. In 2024, she was a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. At present, she is working on – Come To Terms/Llegar A Un Acuerdo – a project about knowledges and naming – evidencing for archive.

Joseph Anthony Cáceres is a queer Nuyorican writer, archivist, and scholar. His work has been published in Evergreen Review, Rican Writing, Slice magazine, CURA, and Nuyorican and Diasporican Visual Art: A Critical Anthology. An alumnus of the Yale Writers’ Workshop, he is also the recipient of the Bronx Council of the Arts’ Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Grant for Fiction, and LAMBDA Literary Writers Residency for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. Joseph holds a Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and is a senior archivist for the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Founders Archive Project. He is currently working on three book projects revolving around the Cafe’s aesthetic, featuring unpublished works and other archival artifacts that record the forgotten contributions of the Cafe’s founders and affiliated artists.