Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

Yxta Maya Murray is a law professor, writer, and social practice artist. The author of twelve books, her recent publications include the novels God Went Like That (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press) and Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly Press, 2021). Her next novel, A History of Hazardous Objects, will be published by New Oeste/University of Nevada Press in 2024. Her next work of nonfiction, “We Make Each Other Beautiful:” Art, Activism, and the Law, will be published by Cornell University Press, also in 2024. She has won a Whiting Award, a Wyeth Foundation Publication Grant, a Barbara Deming/Money for Women grant, an Art Writers Grant, and was a 2021 New York City Arts Corps Grants co-grantee.  

While at Headlands

I’ll be working on a book of connected short stories whose working title is Central Valley. The stories examine how immigration law, the carceral state, climate change, drought, other extreme weather like flooding, racism, and energy policy are today maintaining and intensifying inequality in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The work is based on oral histories that I’m engaging in the area, as well as archival, scientific, and legal research.