Greensboro Daily Photo

Greensboro Bound Literary Festival

The Greensboro Bound Literary Festival has come and gone, but oh what a wonderful festival it was and we look forward to having it return to Greensboro next spring. The festival is always a combination of North Carolina authors, as well as authors from across the United States. This year, there were 55 authors participating. Presenters were as local as the poet laureates from 14 Guilford County high schools.

The above photo features the three co-presenters from the "This Is Your Brain On Poetry" session at Scuppernong Books on Saturday afternoon. They are, from left to right, Filipino-American poet and author Janine Joseph (Stillwater, OK), Maureen Sherbondy (Raleigh, NC), and Crystal Simone Smith (Durham, NC). Topics of their writing often include issues related to social justice. We forgot to ask the trio how they came together for their session, but they seemed to be a perfect fit.

Finally, it is always fun to see the worker bees, behind the scene making our festivals run seamlessly. We saw Lynn Witherspoon working logistics, dashing around on a golf cart, probably going between the literary festival and the blues festival. 

Jaki Shelton Green, NC Poet Laureate

On Sunday afternoon, North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green read ten of her poems at the Hillsborough Gallery of Arts. We wanted to feature Jaki, now,  so you can mark your calendar for her reading at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro on April 2nd. If you like thought-provoking, free verse poetry,  the Scuppernong reading is one you won't want to miss. 

Jaki teaches documentary poetry at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. She writes of love, loss, race, emancipation, American history, and more. Some of her poems share slices of everyday life- especially life in the south. Some are written through the lens of a documentarian, inspired by factual records.  In the 1980s and 1990s, Jaki worked with people on death row. For a year she had inmates write using imagery related to their hands- the last time they held their child's hands, what their hands did, the work done with their hands, and more.  Jaki wrote about her grandmother's hands; reminding the audience, teachers learn what they teach. After that reading, we knew we had to share a photo featuring Jaki's own hands. 

Hearing our state's poet laureate read in person is so special. We look forward to the Scuppernong event and hope to see you there.

Happy Tuesday!