Child Care Services Association is excited to welcome North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green as the featured guest speaker for CCSA’s 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday, May 18, 2024.
Jaki Shelton Green is the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Appointed in 2018, she was the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. She was reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. Green also serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine and is the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Among her accolades, Green was named a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, a 2014 N.C. Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, a 2009 N.C. Piedmont Poet Laureate, and a 2003 North Carolina Award for Literature recipient. She was honored with the George School Outstanding Alumni Award in 2021. And, she was recognized on the Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List for 2022.
Green teaches Documentary Poetry at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and serves as the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC – Chapel Hill. Her publications include “Dead on Arrival,” “Masks,” “Dead on Arrival and New Poems,” “Conjure Blues,” “singing a tree into dance,” and “breath of the song,” published by Blair Publishers; “Feeding the Light,” and “i want to undie you,” published by Jacar Press; and “i want to undie you” (English /Italian bilingual edition) published by Lebeg Publishers.
Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP poetry album, “The River Speaks of Thirst,” produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records. She later released a CD, “i want to undie you,” in 2021. Green owns SistaWRITE, which provides writing retreats for women writers in Sedona, Ariz.; Martha’s Vineyard; Ocracoke, N.C.; Northern Morocco; and Tullamore, Ireland. In 2021, The Arts Club of Chicago premiered a commissioned body of her work in collaboration with Flutronix for the Black Is Series, which was performed in April 2022, by Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
To hear and learn more about Jaki Shelton Green, register for our 50th anniversary celebration!
