Focus: Black Oklahoma Fundraiser - Tulsa Oklahoma
Focus: Black Oklahoma Fundraiser - Tulsa Oklahoma
Focus: Black Oklahoma Fundraiser - Tulsa Oklahoma
Focus: Black Oklahoma Fundraiser - Tulsa Oklahoma
Quraysh Ali Lansana (he/him)
Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of twenty-three books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature.
Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and is a Lecturer in Africana Studies and English at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation.
Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award, and was a Peabody Award nominee.
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Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award, and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.”
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Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine.
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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 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014.
His most recent books include
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Opal’s Greenwood Oasis,
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the skin of dreams: new and collected poems,
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1995-2018,
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The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent) and
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The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop.
Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019.
He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art, is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation.
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)
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Poetry
the skin of dreams: new & collected poems, 1995-2018 (The Calliope Group, 2019)
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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)
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Children’s Literature
A Gift from Greensboro (Penny Candy Books, 2016)
The Big World (Addison-Wesley, 1999)
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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)
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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)
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