Education

 

• Master of Arts in English         December 2022

University of Central Oklahoma            

 

• Bachelor of Arts in English                  2011

University of Central Oklahoma

Oklahoma City University       August 2006-May 2009

• Major: English, emphasis in writing; Minor: Spanish

• Major: Mass Communications, emphasis in print journalism

 

Publications

 

• Author

  • Children’s book: Opal’s Greenwood Oasis with Quraysh Ali Lansana 2020 

  • Poetry: 

• People X People 2022

• Recorded: Mix-Tape Vol. 3 produced by Factory Obscura, June 2022

• “Boxes and Quilts,” Art Focus Oklahoma, Volume 35 No. 4 Fall 2020

• “Green Streets,” Oklahoma Today Magazine, May/June 2020

• Recorded: In the Black Future, There’s A Place So Dangerously Absurd 2016

• Collection: The Risk to Bloom 2014

• Curriculum: Fire in Little Africa co-developer 2021

• Subject:

• “COVID-19 in Oklahoma History Project” with Dr. Autumn Brown and Oklahoma State University 2022

• Teacher Round Table - A Conversation Inspired by Arianna Banack’s “Connecting and Critiquing the Canon: Pairing Pride and Pride and Prejudice” with Shelly K. Unsicker-Durham, Shaista Fenwick, Suzanne Sutton, Connor Woodard December 2021

 

Presentations, Workshops, Conferences

 

“Writing for Change” poetry workshop

Red Dirt Writes, March 10, 2022, Oklahoma City, OK

 

Afternoons of African American Awareness

Tulsa Community College Black History Month, February 17, 2022, virtual

 

“Songs of Community” keynote address

Oklahoma Council Teachers of English Fall Conference, October 9, 2021, Tulsa, OK

 

“Writing Change From the Inside Out” poetry reading and workshop

OU Writing Center, September 22, 2021, Norman, OK

 

“Personal Stories in Effective Argumentation” 

OSU Writing Project, June 2021, Stillwater, OK

 

Tulsa Race Massacre Commemorative Reading

Mark Allen Everett Poetry Series, May 30, 2021, Norman, OK

 

“Appreciating Sound Devices” and “Guided Writing with Types of Repetition” 

Youth Poetry Workshops Metropolitan Library System, April 2021, online

 

“How Writing Creates Us: Exploring Different Media as Purposeful Re-Creation”

Ralph Ellison Foundation Creative Writing Workshop October 8, 2019, OKC, OK

 

“From Slave Narratives To ‘Urban’ or ‘Street Fiction: African American Literature as a Genre in Transition”

Language and Linguistics Student Conference, November 12, 2011, Edmond, OK

 

"’The Hallelulian Side’: Myth and Escapism in ‘Big Meeting’"

Language and Linguistics Student Conference, November 13, 2010, Edmond, OK