Rachel Jamison Webster at the University of Dubuque -- March 16.
Thursday, March 16, 6:30 p.m.
University of Dubuque's Multicultural Student Center, 2000 University Avenue, Dubuque IA
Offering a presentation in the Archway Reading and Lecture Series, award-winning poet and educator Rachel Jemison Webster will speak at the University of Dubuque on March 16, her most recent book Benjamin Banneker & Us lauded by Booklist as "an engrossing, multifaceted, profoundly thoughtful, and beautifully rendered inquiry that forms a clarifying lens on America’s ongoing struggles against racism and endemic injustice.”
Webster was born in Madison, Ohio, in 1974, attended Chicago's DePaul University, and then transferred to Portland, Oregon's Lewis & Clark College, where she graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English Literature. Also earning her M.F.A. from Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, Webster has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the American Association of University Women, the Howard Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. In 2017, Webster was named a Hewlett Fellow for her establishment of curriculum highlighting diversity and social inequalities, and in 2018, Northwestern University recognized her with an Arts and Sciences Alumni Teaching Award for excellence in teaching.
In addition to this year's release of Benjamin Banneker & Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, Webster has also published four books of poetry: Mary Is a River, which was a finalist for the 2014 National Poetry Series; September; The Endless Unbegun; and The Sea Came Up & Drowned, the latter of which includes erasure poetry and examples of Webster's visual art. Her poems and essays also frequently appear in anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Tin House, and The Yale Review. Currently a resident of Evanston, Illinois, Webster is a Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University, and before she taught at the college level, she designed and taught writing workshops for city youth through the Urban League in Portland and Gallery 37 in Chicago. In addition, Webster helped develop paid after-school arts programs with Chicago’s First Lady Maggie Daley, and co-edited two anthologies of writing by young Chicagoans with 2001's Alchemy and 2005's Paper Atrium.
Rachel Jamison Webster will present her reading and discussion on March 16 in the University of Dubuque Multicultural Student Center's Peter and Susan Smith Welcome Center, participation in the 6:30 p.m. event is free, and more information is available by calling (563)589-3267 and visiting Dbq.edu.
