CreativeMornings: Gretchen Carvajal on Altitude
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026 | 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM |Chapter 510 & the Dept. of Make / Believe (546 9th St, Oakland, CA 94607)
Chapter 510 is thrilled to host CreativeMornings at our center from June through December, kicking off the series with a conversation featuring Jena Dominique! CreativeMornings is the world’s largest creative community; hosting free local chapter events in cities around the world every Friday, Virtual FieldTrips every week, and job postings and company profiles via the CreativeGuild.
Everyone is welcome. Everyone is creative. Register today, tickets go fast!
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Gretchen Carvajal is a poet, educator, and multidisciplinary artist whose work traces the interconnectedness between the Philippine archipelago and the Bay Area communities that shaped her. Working across poetry, jewelry, printmaking, film, facilitation, and digital pedagogy, her practice investigates how memory, migration, adornment, and collective storytelling shape Filipino American identity across generations. Through her work, she explores how over 7,000 islands can live inside a single household, body, or poem asking what it means to inherit histories carried through water, diaspora, and silence.
Rooted in both personal and communal memory, Carvajal’s work challenges flattening narratives of Asian American identity that prioritize representation without interrogating power, liberation, and solidarity. Influenced and sharpened by generations of Black and Asian writers, artists, and organizers she considers mentors and family, her work seeks honesty over performance honoring her people while asking difficult questions about history, accountability, and collective freedom.
Her work lives at the convergence of the personal and collective, asking how we carry each other across water, memory, and time.