Acclaimed Affrilachian poet Bianca Lynne Spriggs will speak at Eastern Kentucky University on Thursday, Feb. 9, presenting “The Only Way Out Is Within: A Poet’s Path to Surrender.”
Spriggs’ lecture, free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in O’Donnell Hall of the Whitlock Building. It is part of the University’s year-long Chautauqua lecture series, “Order and Chaos,” and serves as the keynote address for Black History Month
A writer and multi-disciplinary artist from Lexington, Spriggs was named as one of the Top 30 Performance Poets in the nation by The Root and is a Cave Canem Fellow. She also received the 2016 Sallie Bingham Award, a 2013 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, and Artist Enrichment and Arts Meets Activism grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and was a Pushcart nominee.
Spriggs is the author of “Kaffir Lily” (Wind Publications, 2010), “How Swallowtails Become Dragons” (Accents Publishing, 2011), “Call Her By Her Name” (Northwestern University Press, 2016), and “The Galaxy Is a Dance Floor” (Argos Books, 2016), as well as the co-editor for “Circe's Lament: An Anthology of Wild Women” (Accents Publishing, 2016)and the forthcoming “Undead: Ghouls, Ghosts, and More” (Apex Publications, 2017). Her work may also be found in numerous journals and anthologies. Spriggs is the literary arts liaison for the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, creator and program director for The SwallowTale Project: Creative Writing for Incarcerated Women, as well as managing editor for pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture and poetry editor for Apex Magazine.
For more information, visit www.biancaspriggs.com.
Her lecture is sponsored by the Office of Diversity; the African/African American Studies Program; the Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Social Work; the Department of English and Theatre; the Appalachian Studies Program; the Department of Languages, Cultures and Humanities; and EKU Honors.
For more information about the Chautauqua lecture series, visit www.chautauqua.eku.edu or contact Chautauqua Lecture Coordinator Erik Liddell at erik.liddell@eku.edu.