A conversation with Poet Laureate and first Piedmont Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green

Breathe, write and listen to this podcast episode with our North Carolina Poet Laureate, the incredible Jaki Shelton Green. Jaki delivers restorative words, creative encouragement, and spiritual succor. It’s no accident that I released this interview on the Monday of Election Week; consider this a balm for your unease and a motivation to claim your narrative.

Jaki muses about writing through difficult times, retreating ‘SistaWRITE style’, and her amazing new poetry album The River Speaks of Thirst.

Click here to read the transcript of this interview.

Listen via the Artist Soapbox website or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and the usual podcisty-places.

BIO:

Jaki Shelton Green is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. When he appointed her in 2018, Governor Cooper stated that “Jaki Shelton Green brings a deep appreciation of our state’s diverse communities to her role as an ambassador of North Carolina literature. Jaki’s appointment is a wonderful new chapter in North Carolina’s rich literary history.”

Her collegiate and professional experiences include currently teaching Documentary Poetry at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, Visiting Professor for the Carlow University MFA Program, Lenoir-Rhyne University Writer-in-Residence, Duke University Teaching for Equity Fellow, 2019 Barnard College Africana Studies Department Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecturer, 2019 UNC Chapel Hill Sonja Stone Memorial Lecturer, Taller Portobelo Artist Colony Portobelo Panama, University of Panama, Department of Cultural Resources for Brazil, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Distinguished Visiting Writer, North Carolina Turkish Association, Alhambra Cultural Center in Marrakech Morocco, NC Symphony, NC African American Cultural Heritage Commission.

She is the owner of SistaWRITE and co-partner with Dream Yourself Awake and Vertikal Creative Ventures providing writing retreats and travel excursions for women writers in Sedona Arizona, Ocracoke North Carolina, Agadir Morocco, and Tullamore Ireland.