Brave Testimony: Brenda Marie Osbey

A poetry reading

Wednesday, April 16th at 6PM in the Arts Cafe at the Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Brenda Marie Osbey, a New Orleans native, is an author of poetry and prose nonfiction in English and French. Her books include History and Other Poems (Time Being Books, 2013); All Saints: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997), which received the 1998 American Book Award; Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman (Story Line Press, 1991); In These Houses (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); and Ceremony for Minneconjoux (Callaloo Poetry Series, 1983; University Press of Virginia, 1985). In spring 2005, Osbey was appointed the first peer-selected Poet Laureate of the State of Louisiana. During her two-year tenure as laureate, she toured the United States presenting a series of poetry readings, lectures and open discussions advocating the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region of the United States in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. She has been a resident fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, the Camargo Foundation and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She also has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and others. Osbey is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.