Verse Magazine and the Creative Writing Program host writer M. NourbeSe Philip

Dr. Andrew Zawacki and Verse Magazine, with help from the University of Georgia Creative Writing Program, are pleased to host writer M. NourbeSe Philip for a performance on Thursday, March 21st at 7 p.m.  This event, titled Zong! — Talking Code, Stalking Silence, will take place in the M. Smith Griffith Auditorium at the Georgia Museum of Art (90 Carlton St, Athens, GA 30602) and is free and open to the public.

Philip is an unembedded poet, essayist, novelist and playwright who lives in the space-time of the City of Toronto. She practiced law in the City of Toronto for seven years before becoming a poet and writer.  She has published four books of poetry including the seminal She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks, one novel and four collections of essays.  Her book-length poem, Zong!, is a conceptually innovative, genre-breaking epic, which explodes the legal archive as it relates to slavery.   Her most recent work is BlanK,  a collection of essays on racism and culture.   Among her awards are numerous Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council grants, including the prestigious Chalmers Award, as well as the Pushcart Prize (USA, 1981), the Casa de las Americas Prize (Cuba, 1988), the Lawrence Foundation Prize (USA, 1994), the Arts Foundation of Toronto Writing and Publishing Award (Toronto,1995), the Dora Award (finalist, drama, 1999), and the Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (Outstanding mid-career artist. 2015).