With Peter Vankevich
North Carolina writer-poet Jaki Shelton Green has received many awards.
In 2014, she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. She received the North Carolina Award in Literature in 2003 and in 2009 was named the Piedmont Laureate.
Her publications include Dead on Arrival, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, Blue Opal (a play), and breath of the song.
A resident of Mebane, Green has conducted workshops and presented readings throughout the United States, Europe, the Caribbean Islands and Latin America. This spring she will serve as the 2016 Writer in Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University.
Jaki describes herself as a creativity coach, teacher and cultural activist, and has taught creative writing to marginalized populations of our society including the homeless and the incarcerated.
This year, her two visits to Ocracoke were to conduct her women’s writers workshop, SistaWrite. In these workshops, she helps people mine their deepest thoughts and feelings.
“We are all archaeologists and anthropologists (of our lives),” she said during one of her visits here. “Writing has been that tool for the dig.”
She considers Ocracoke to be a wonderful location for writers. Here is an interview.
Listen:
