Franklin, WI, April 30: 2016 One-day Teaching Conference

This year’s conference will feature Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, public scholar and poet. She is the editor of two anthologies, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements and the 9/11 anthology Another World is Possible. Imarisha is also the author of the nonfiction book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison and Redemption and the poetry collection Scars/Stars. She was a nominated for Oregon’s Poet Laureate, and was awarded one of two 2015 James Tiptree Jr. Fellowships. Imarisha has taught in Portland State University’s Black Studies Department, Oregon State University’s Women Gender Sexuality Studies Department, and Southern New Hampshire University’s English Department. For the past six years, she has presented all over Oregon as a public scholar with Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project on topics such as Oregon Black history, alternatives to incarceration, and the history of hip hop.

Keynote Presentation:  Often times movements for social justice are very adept at analyzing and critiquing existing power structures and inequalities, which is absolutely needed. But how do we also create space individually and especially collectively to dream of alternatives? Walidah Imarisha will talk about her work around science fiction and social change, and how she has been helping to facilitate communities envisioning new just worlds so they can begin to do the work of pulling those dreams into reality.