Poets, professors, and advocates Ethelbert Miller, Holly Karapetkova, and Teri Ellen Cross Davis will join 1455’s Executive Director Sean Murphy in a discussion.
The authors will have a free-ranging discussion about how their work interrogates the intersection of race, bearing witness, and political engagement. Their poetry has approached race from both historical and personal perspectives; they will explore the challenges and rewards of these themes and strategies. Each writer will share some poetry, provide some context for their work, and take questions from the audience.
Meet the Panelists
Eugene Ethelbert Miller, best known as E. Ethelbert Miller, is an African-American poet, teacher and literary activist, based in Washington, DC. He is the author of several collections of poetry and two memoirs, the editor of Poet Lore magazine, and the host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin.
Holly Karapetkova’s poetry, prose, and translations have appeared widely in print and online, and she’s the author of Words We Might One Day Say, winner of the 2010 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Poetry Award, and Towline, winner of the 2016 Vern Rutsala Poetry Contest from Cloudbank Books. Her current manuscript projects, Still Life With White and Planter’s Wife grapple with the deep wounds left by our history of racism, slavery, and environmental destruction. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and teaches at Marymount University.
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, (Gival Press) winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She has received fellowships to attend Cave Canem, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, the Community of Writers Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is the 2019/20 HoCoPoLitSo Writer-in-Residence, adjunct professor at George Washington University, and the poetry coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Sean Murphy has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. His work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, The New York Post, The Good Men Project, Memoir Magazine, and others. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and served as writer-in-residence of the Noepe Center at Martha's Vineyard. He’s Founding Director of 1455 (www.1455litarts.org).