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Fertile Ground Poetry Event:

Sowing the Seeds of Creative Expression in The Land

Join poets Kelly Harris-DeBerry, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Janice Lowe as they share their work.

About the authors:

Kelly Harris-DeBerry is the author of Freedom Knows My Name. She  received her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and her B.A. in Business Communications from Kent State University. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center  and Cave Canem. Her work has appeared in Verite News, The Louisiana Endowment for Humanities' 64 Parishes; The Langston Hughes Review, The National Parks Service Centennial Commemoration publication with Sonia Sanchez and many other literary journals. Her podcast episodes for How I Got Ovah and About Place Journal said Congo Square: Sustaining the Sacred Post-Katrina highlights her talents as a producer and researcher. Kelly is a former guest poetry editor for Bayou Magazine at the University of New Orleans and has worked on several literary programs for the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of A More Perfect Union, winner of the 2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Haint, winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the 2020 winner of the Poetry Society of America's (PSA) Robert H. Winner Memorial Award and a finalist for the PSA's George Bogin Memorial Award. She is the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts grant and a Meret grant from the Freya Project. She is a Cave Canem fellow, is on the Advisory Council of Split This Rock, and a member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She has been a semi-finalist and finalist judge for the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Out Loud. Her work has appeared in many anthologies including Academy of American Poets, ArLiJo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Delaware Poetry Review, Figure 1, Fledgling Rag, Gargoyle, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Kestrel, Little Patuxent Review, Love’s Executive Order, Natural Bridge, North American Review, Mom Egg Review, MiPOesias, Pacifica Literary Review, PANK, Poetry Daily, Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, Raising Mothers, Rosebud, Tin House, Torch, and Sligo Journal.

Janice A. Lowe, composer, poet, and pianist is the author of Leaving CLE: Poems of Nomadic Dispersal and the chapbook SWAM. Her poems have appeared in Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, Solidarity Texts, Interim Poetics, American Poetry Review, In the Tradition and The Hat. Along with collaborators Tyehimba Jess and Yahdon Israel, she is a 2020 Creative Capital Awardee for a forthcoming multi-media stage version of Jess’ OLIO. A busy multi-disciplinary artist, she is the composer of the musicals SIT-IN at the FIVE & DIME, words by Marjorie Duffield, SOMEWHERE IN TEXAS, libretto by Charles E. Drew, Jr. and LIL BUDDA, text by Stephanie L. Jones, which received a developmental residency from The Eugene O'Neill Musical Theater Conference and appeared in the NAMT Festival of New Musicals. She holds an MFA in musical theater composition from New York University. She has been awarded fellowships from The Rauschenberg Foundation and from The Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, University of Pennsylvania.

This event is presented in partnership with The Great Lakes African American Writers Conference.

Complimentary light refreshments will be served during this event, while supplies last.

Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.