Brenda Marie Osbey | Art Writing Incubator Public Lecture
The first of three 2025 AWrI public lectures around the topic of "Your Voice is Critical" featuring Brenda Marie Osbey. This lecture will be held on Saturday, July 19 from 12-1PM EST.
Learn more about the Art Writing Incubator program here: https://burnaway.org/programs/2025-art-writing-incubator/
About Brenda Marie Osbey: Poet, essayist, translator, editor, and independent librettist working in English and French, Brenda Marie Osbey is the author of seven books, including All Souls: Essential Poems (LSU Press, 2015), History and Other Poems (Langston Hughes Award, 2014), and a Kongo-New Orleans opera triptych, including Sultane au Grand Marais (Rites & Reason Theatre, 2011). Edited works include poetry features for War|Scapes, Illuminations, and the 2016 African Poetry Book Series volume Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems, Edited and with an Introduction by Brenda Marie Osbey (APBS/University of Nebraska Press). Current editing projects include the Gabriel Okara Reader, comprising the author’s prose and drama.“Léon-Gontran Damas and Guy Tirolien Translated from the French by Brenda Marie Osbey” was published in Renaissance Noire (Fall 2018). Her work has been featured by War|Scapes and The Academy of American Poets, and commissioned by University of Virginia, William & Mary, the Plaine Commune District of France, and the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. Arts and culture essays have appeared in The American Voice; Georgia Review; BrightLeaf; Mondes Francophones; Southern Literary Journal; Creative Nonfiction, and Renaissance Noire. Recipient of numerous research/writing awards, Osbey was the 2021–22 Hodson Trust-John Carter Brown Library Fellow. Critical studies of her work include Summoning Our Saints: the Poetry and Prose of Brenda Marie Osbey by John Wharton Lowe (Lexington Books, 2019). Osbey is a New Orleans native.
Image by H. Baquet (New Orleans) and courtesy of Brenda Marie Osbey.