The annual Mountain West Arts Conference will be hosting a virtual keynote on Thursday because of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The keynote from poet Glenis Redmond will be held at 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 7. The keynote is free thanks to support from the Sam and Diane Stewart Family Foundation. Those who wish to attend can register at artsandmuseums.utah.gov/mwac. Attendees can also join an online discussion following Redmond’s keynote at 2:15 p.m.
The Mountain West Arts Conference is a premier gathering for hundreds of artists, community organizers, and nonprofit leaders from throughout Utah. Because of the restrictions on mass gatherings due to COVID-19, this year’s conference keynote was shifted to a virtual venue.
You can read more about Glenis Redmond in the latest edition of MUSE Magazine.
Speaker Bio:
Glenis Redmond travels nationally and internationally reading and teaching poetry so much that she has earned the title, Road Warrior Poet. She has recently been awarded the highest award for the Arts in the state of South Carolina, The Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award. Also, she will receive the “Charlie Award,” given in memory of Charles Price granted by the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in the Fall of 2020
In 2014-19, Glenis has served as the Mentor Poet for the National Student Poet’s Program to prepare students to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House. The students now read at the Library of Congress. Author and T&W Board member Tayari Jones selected Glenis Redmond’s essay, “Poetry as a Mirror,” as the runner-up for the 2018 Bechtel Prize. Teachers & Writers Collaborative awards the annual Bechtel Prize to the author of an essay that explores themes related to creative writing, arts education, and/or the imagination.
Glenis is a Cave Canem Fellow, a North Carolina Literary Fellowship Recipient, and a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist. She also helped create the first Writer-in-Residence at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Redmond’s “Dreams Speak: My Father’s Words” was chosen for third place for the North Carolina Literary Review’s James Applewhite Prize and “Sketch,” “Every One of My Names,” and “House: Another Kind of Field will be published in NCLR in 2019. These poems are about —Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of the underground railroad; Harriet Jacobs, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist, and the author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; and Harriet E. Wilson, who was held as an indentured servant in the North and went on to become an important novelist, businesswoman, and religious speaker.
Glenis believes that poetry is a healer, and she can be found in the trenches across the world applying pressure to those in need, one poem at a time.