Poet Sarah Browning to Read at Marymount March 14

The public is invited to a free reading by poet Sarah Browning from 2 to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 14 in Reinsch Library Auditorium on the campus of Marymount University, 2807 North Glebe Road. Browning is co-founder and executive director of Split This Rock, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets.

“Given what’s going on in our country, I’ll mostly be reading political poems from my upcoming collection,” she said.

That collection, “Killing Summer,” will be released in September by Sibling Rivalry Press.

“Poetry reminds us of the power of the human voice and that when we speak from our personal experience and our own idiosyncratic voice we can reach outside of ourselves, find others, and be reminded that language is one of our greatest inventions,” Browning said. “Even when a poem is about a horror or an injustice it can still give us hope rather than silencing that voice.”

Browning is also an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and a featured writer for Other Words. She co-hosts the Sunday Kind of Love poetry series at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., now in its ninth year.

Author of “Whiskey in the Garden of Eden” (The Word Works, 2007), and coeditor of “D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology” (Argonne House Press, 2004), she is the recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, a Creative Communities Initiative grant, and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. In March, 2014 Browning co-edited a special Split This Rock issue of POETRY Magazine with Don Share.

She previously worked with WomenArts to support socially engaged women artists, and with Amherst Writers & Artists to develop creative writing workshops with low-income women and youth. She has been a community organizer for Boston public housing and a grassroots political organizer for a host of social and political issues.

Marymount University is an independent, coeducational Catholic university offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in a wide range of disciplines.

 

Photo caption

Sarah Browning

photo by Nikki Brugnoli Whipkey