Laurens — The Laurens County Public Library is privileged to host award-winning poet and “teaching artist” Glenis Redmond, March 7th at 5 pm. The first Poet Laureate of Greenville Count, she is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist and a Cave Canem alumni. She has received multiple honors including the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award. She was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2022.
Glenis has spent almost three decades touring as a poet and teaching artist. She served as the Poet-in-Resident for the Peace Center in Greenville and the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. A Kennedy Center Teaching Artist for seventeen years, Glenis has created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts across the country.
Ms. Redmond will be reading selections from her books, The Listening Skin and Praise Songs for David Drake.
This program is free and open to the public.
For more information contact the Laurens Public Library at 864-681-7323.
BIO - Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Under ground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listen ing Skin (Four Way Books), Three Harriets & Others (Finishing Line Press), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor's Award and inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She is a "Charlie Award" recipient awarded by the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival and was recently a recipient of the Peacemak er Award by the Upstate Mediation Center in 2022.
Glenis was born on Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. She presently resides in Greenville. She was the founder of the Greenville Poetry Slam in the early 90's. Glenis confesses that she is Bi-Caro linian as she lived in Asheville, North Carolina for seventeen years and was a vital leader in the poetry scene in the 90's. During that time, she was a Southern Fried Slam champion of the individ uals twice and ranked twice in the top ten at the National Poetry Slam. Glenis helped found Word Slam, a poetry slam for teens in Asheville, NC. She was awarded the WNC Best Poet through the Mountain Xpress so many times, she was placed in the Hall of Fame. She is a North Carolina Literary Fellowship recipient and helped to create the first Writer-in-Residence program at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College while touring full-time as a poet and mother-of-twins, Amber, and Celeste Sherer. She is now a Gaga to three grandchildren Julian and Paisley and newborn, Quinn.
Glenis has spent almost three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. She served as the Poet-in-Resident for the Peace Center in Greenville and the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. As a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, for seventeen years, Glenis has created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts across the country.
Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama atThe White House.
Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times, as well as numerous literary journals nationally and internationally. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.
