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Poets Mary E. Weems & Mwatabu S. Okantah

Join us when poets Mary E. Weems and Mwatabu S. Okantah visit for a reading and book signing.

About the authors:

Mary E. Weems, M.A., Ph.D., is a poet, playwright, author, performer, imagination-intellect theorist, and social/cultural foundations scholar. Weems is the author of more than thirteen books including Still Hanging: Using Performance Texts to Deconstruct Racism (Brill/Sense, 2021), Collaborative Spirit-Writing in Everyday Black Lives (Routledge, 2022) and Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet (Routledge, 2023); Blackeyed: Plays and Monologues (Sense Publishing, 2015) Writings of Healing and Resistance: Empathy and the Imagination-Intellect (Peter Lang, 2012), Public Education and the Imagination Intellect: I Speak from the wound in my Mouth (Peter Lang, 2003), five chapbooks, most notably white (Wick Chapbook), and numerous poems, articles and book chapters. Weems's plays and/or excerpts have been published or produced since 1997 and Fall and Response her first book of poems since 2012 is forthcoming from Africa World Press in the Fall of 2024.

Mwatabu S. Okantah holds the BA in English and African Studies from Kent State University (1976) and the MA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York (1982). He is currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Africana Studies at Kent State University. He also serves as Director of the Ghana Study Abroad Program. He has taught at Cleveland State University, The Livingston College of Rutgers University and Lakeland Community College.

Okantah is the author of Afreeka Brass (1983), Collage (1984), Legacy: for Martin & Malcolm (1987), Cheikh Anta Diop: Poem for the Living—published as a limited trilingual edition in English, French and Wolof (1997/2017), Reconnecting Memories: Dreams No Longer Deferred (2004), Muntu Kuntu Energy: New and Selected Poetry (2013), Guerrilla Dread: Poetry for the Heart and Minds (2019) and A Black Voice in the Wilderness (2024).

Books will be available for purchase, accepting cash and Cash App.