gregg yupanki bautista
b. 1987, NJ 

Gregg is a writer, artist, and musician born and raised in the US to Peruvian immigrants. He received a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts with a concentration in Painting. His work explores themes around migration as a natural phenomenon and the potential resulting dissonance of cultural assimilation vs. integration. His poetry has appeared in BY THE WAYE and The Red Wheelbarrow, and his visual art has appeared New American Paintings.

Heavily influenced by his Andean heritage, a conceptual music project called Yupanki coalesced from experimenting with layering loops of guitar through effects pedals. A soundscape of swelling ambience and distorted guitars, the music became the soundtrack for a story with time migrants, memory, nature, and old gods emerging as the framework. The project follows the journey of the eponymous character Yupanki, a lost time migrant with no memories of his past as he explores a foreign landscape while trying to find the where and when of his home. The Yupanki project has released an EP and singles, with an illustrated chapbook of poems and short stories to bring more of this time migrant’s world into focus, titled Un Lugar Lejos: Valleys.

He is also the founder of Echo Thread Projects, hosts a monthly poetry open mic series in Hopewell, NJ called Poets & Storytellers Open, and is currently working on the next installment of Yupanki as well as a full length collection of poetry.

Gregg is based somewhere in the Sourlands of NJ.