West Virginia University will be host to the first of an annual series of events this fall—the Women of Appalachia Project, which invites residents of all 420 Appalachian counties to submit writing to be featured in “Women Speak.”
WVU Libraries is partnering with the LGBTQ+ Center, the Women’s Resource Center, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, and WVU Campus Read to bring the juried spoken word event to campus on September 30, in conjunction with the Libraries’ Looking at Appalachia exhibit.
The theme also connects with the University’s Campus Read selection for 2017-18, Hidden Figures.
“We are excited about this project because it celebrates the strong women of our region and provides a platform through which they can express thoughts, ideas, knowledge, wisdom and emotion,” Campus Read Chair Susan Lantz said.
The Women of Appalachia “Women Speak” will be held at WVU’s Downtown Campus Library. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to view Looking at Appalachia, an exhibit of 73 crowd-sourced photographs from contemporary Appalachian amateur and professional photographers currently on display at the DCL.
Since 2010, Albany, Ohio-based poet and photographer Kari Gunter-Seymour has curated art exhibitions and spoken word events via the Women of Appalachia Project, an arts organization she created to address discrimination of women from Appalachia.
The deadline to submit fiction or nonfiction poetry, song, short story or essays is August 10. For guidelines and other information, visit womenofappalachia.com.
The LGBTQ+ Center and the Women’s Resource Center recommends individuals to consider the diversity of gender and sexual minorities, and hopes they explore an intersectional perspective that includes racial, ethnic, class, ability, religious, region and other identity markers.
Other participating sites include Ohio University Southern; Parkersburg Art Center; The Bowen House in Logan, Ohio; Ohio University Multicultural Arts Gallery in Athens, Ohio; and the Pump House Center for the Arts in Chillicothe, Ohio.
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CONTACT:
Sally Deskins
Exhibits & Programs Coordinator for WVU Libraries
304.293.0369; sbdeskins@mail.wvu.edu
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