Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing Workshop

Wednesday, Jul 22

7-9 p.m.

Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing

Chicago State University

9501 South King Drive; DH 210-A

Workshop

Host: Quraysh Ali Lansana

One of America's most distinguished younger poets will conduct a poetry workshop at one of the few beacons of African-American literature in country: Chicago State University’s Gwendolyn Brooks Center.

Award winning poet and scholar Quraysh Ali Lansana will host a three-day workshop, July 22, 29 and August 5.

Each of the three workshop days go from 7-9 p.m.

The cost of the workshop is $100. The workshops will take place on the campus of Chicago State, 9501 South King Drive. A limited number of slots are available. Those interested in registering for the workshops should contact the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at 773-995-4440.

The workshop is an opportunity for poets – both novice and experienced – to be instructed by one of nation’s most distinguished poets in Lansana, who is the director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center and author of five volumes of poetry.

“His voice, imagery, and spare lyricism are influenced by poets Lucille Clifton, Sterling Brown and Walt Whitman. These are stories of protest and gratitude from a beautiful storyteller,” says poet Renny Golden in the forward of Lansana’s latest poetry collection, bloodsoil (sooner red) (Voices from the American Land, 2009).

Lansana’s other books of poetry include cockroach children: corner poems and street psalms (1995) and Southside Rain (2000) and They Shall Run (2004), a collection of poems based on the life of Harriet Tubman. Lansana is the author of a children’s book, The Big World (1999), and co-editor of Dream of a Word: The Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology (2006) and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, published in 2002.

In addition to serving as director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center, Lansana is also an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Chicago State University.

Contact: Tacuma R. Roeback, 773-995-4440

The Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing (GBC) was founded in 1990 on the historic campus of Chicago State University (CSU). It is named after Ms. Brooks, the former Poet Laureate of the State of Illinois and Distinguished Professor of English at Chicago State University. The Brooks Center is especially well known for its annual Gwendolyn Brooks Writers’ Conference, which is in its 18th year. The GBC is also home to the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (IHOF), which has more than 150 inductees. Mr. Wright, whose plaque hangs in the Brooks Center, was inducted in the IHOF’s inaugural 1998 class.