Quryash Ali Lansana (he/him)
Quraysh Ali Lansana is a poet, author and educator. He is author of nine poetry books, three textbooks, four children's books, editor of eight anthologies, and coauthor of a book of pedagogy. He is Tulsa Artist Fellow, Interim Director for the Center for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation and a Professor at Oklahoma State University – Tulsa.
He is a former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2011, where he was also Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing until 2014.
Quraysh is a founding member and President of Tri-City Collective and Creator and Executive Producer for Focus: Black Oklahoma. He earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where he was a Departmental Fellow and received his Bachelor of Arts from Chicago State University in African American Studies.
Selected Publications
Non-fiction
Seasons: A Gwendolyn Brooks Experience Curriculum Guide
(Brooks Permissions, TBD)
Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, and Social Justice in Classroom and Community, with Georgia A. Popoff (Teachers and Writers Collaborative, March 2011)
Poetry
the skin of dreams: new & collected poems, 1995-2018 (The Calliope Group, 2019)
The Walmart Republic, with Christopher Stewart (Mongrel Empire Press, 2014)
reluctant minivan (Living Arts Society, 2014)
mystic turf (Willow Books/Aquarius Press, October 2012)
bloodsoil (sooner red) (Voices from The American Land, April 2009)
Greatest Hits: 1995-2005 (Pudding House Publications, 2006)
They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems (Third World Press, 2004)
Southside Rain (Third World Press, 2000)
cockroach children: corner poems and street psalms (nappyhead press, 1995)
Children’s Literature
A Gift from Greensboro (Penny Candy Books, 2016)
The Big World (Addison-Wesley, 1999)
Editor:
We Are: Chicago Photographs and Literature (The Chicago Community Trust, 2016) African American Literature Reader (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2001)
I Represent: An Anthology of Literary Works from Chicago's Gallery 37 (Tia Chucha Press, 1996)
Co-Editor:
The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, with Georgia A. Popoff (Haymarket Books, 2017)
Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writings of Gwendolyn Brooks, with Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Curbside Splendor, 2017).
The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, with Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall (Haymarket Books, 2015)
Dream of a Word: A Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology, with Toni Asante Lightfoot (Tia Chucha Press, 2005)
Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, with Tony Medina and Samiya A. Bashir (Third World Press, 2002)
dream in yourself: An Anthology of Literary Works from Chicago's Gallery 37, with Jenn Morea (Tia Chucha Press,1997)