Speaker
“Thank you for your willingness to come to the Eiteljorg to enlighten and inspire our visitors with your amazing family stories.” Alisa Nordholt-Dean, Director of Public Programs, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.
The first book I reread 20 times within a week at 9 or 10 years old was the 1968 anthology, I Am the Darker Brother. I devoured the poems. Thanks to editor Arnold Adoff who culled this collection of poetry as carefully as a weaver on his spinning wheel, and to Chicago librarian Charlene Rollins’s moving forward, everything you read here and see in my work as a poet began with that book — with those Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement poets. Yet at some point, song stole into my performances and academic lectures. It just felt right to represent the whole of my work and experiences as a writer, a traditionally-engaged cultural worker and a literary activist through all my lenses. I hope my work inspires young writers, in fact, I hope to inspire young and older people who don’t even know they’re writers yet.
Topics I Can Speak On:
Social Justice
Diversity & Inclusion Racial Formation
African American Literature
African American Aesthetic
Black Art, Culture Gender, and Politics
Creative Nonfiction
Editing and Practical Application of Magazine
Entertainment Industry Narratives
Techniques and Strategies
Heritage and Ethnicity
Hip-Hop and Women
Identity and the Role of Language
Literary Industry, Agents, and Editors
Culture, Politics, and Social Identity Magazine Writing and Publishing
Literature in a Green World
Migration and Identity
Personal Narrative as a Critical Tool
The Poetics Social, Historical, and Cultural Commentary
Craft of Fiction, Poetry, Narrative Nonfiction
Indigenous American Narrative and Image
The Role of the Artist in Society
Nature Writing
Writing the Memoir
Women’s Literature, Women’s Studies Goddess
The Power of Narrative and Storytelling
Rhetoric and Identity