2006-2007 Writers at Rutgers Reading Series

Admission: Free and open to the Rutgers community and the general public
The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing

Brenda Marie Osbey is the Poet Laureate of Louisiana.  Among her four collections is

All Saints: New and Selected Poems, which won the 1998 American Book Award.  She has received the Academy of American Poets Loring-Williams Prize and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute of Harvard University’s Radcliffe College, and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, where she was Writer in Residence.  A native of  New Orleans, she teaches at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Kalamu ya Salaam is a well-known professional editor/writer, filmmaker, educator, producer, and arts administrator.  He is founder and director of the New Orleans-based Neo-Griot Workshop and moderator of e-drum, a listserv of over 1600 black writers and diverse supporters of literature.  His recent productions include the anthology From a Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets, the spoken word CD My Story, My Song, and On His Way, a documentary film on jazz funerals.  A native and longtime resident of New Orleans, he is currently based in Nashville.

Selah Saterstrom is the author of  The Pink Institution, The Meat & Spirit Plan, and Slab,

a hybrid novel energized by her Katrina experience.  She has received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and was the 2005 Case Writer in Residence for Western Illinois University and Artist in Residence at Warren Wilson College.  She co-curates Katrina Projects, a “gallery without walls,” and is a professor of creative writing at the University of Denver.  She grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Evie Shockley is the author of  The Gorgon Goddess and half-red-sea. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, Hambone, HOW2, and Poetry Daily: Poems from the World’s Most Popular Poetry Website.  She has also placed her fiction and literary criticism in such publications as Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, African American Review, North American Review, and Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry. She is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at Rutgers University.