Campus Community
Posted: Thursday, April 9, 2009Writer Tisa Bryant to Speak at Buffalo State
Buffalo State College is pleased to welcome writer and poet Tisa Bryant for a reading of her work on Thursday, April 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center East. The event is free and open to the public.
Bryant’s work traverses the boundaries of genre, culture, and memory within the continuum of history. Her first book, Unexplained Presence (2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature, and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them.
Born in Tucson, Arizona, and raised in Massachusetts, Bryant earned her M.F.A. in literary arts from Brown University in 2004, and was named a Zora Neale Hurston Scholar to Naropa University that same year. Now an assist professor with the Institute for Writing Studies at St. John’s University, she has taught poetry, fiction, creative writing, literature, and composition at Brown, Naropa, Rhode Island College, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Lesley University. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, Bombay Gin, Chain, Curve, Hatred of Capitalism, Girlfriends, Long Journey Home,Mosaic, Short Fuse, and XCP, and in gallery exhibits for Buffalo-born visual artist Laylah Ali.
Bryant has served as a juror for the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian and Independent film festivals, and is a founding editor and publisher of the hardcover annual The Encyclopedia Project.
Her visit is sponsored by the Buffalo State College English Department and Just Buffalo Literary Center, and is supported by a Buffalo State Auxiliary Services Grant.