2018 Creative Residency at The Osage Forest of Peace.
A month-long residency focused on poetry and work on my latest novel.
2016-2017 “The Year of Food” – Research Fellow at the The University of Tulsa through the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities.
My research focused on Expressions of Peace & War at the Global Table – in other words, what we need to “bring to the table” for a peaceful meal and world. I examined how we use food to create identity and borders (emotional and geographic), and what that means to the conversation around peace. Since we can’t talk about peace without talking about her opposite – war – the scope of my research also considered the challenges we face on our journey towards peace.
I worked on several poems and art pieces that speak to my findings. I’ve already participated in a two-day Food Writing Symposium at University of Tulsa hosted by the Center for Humanities, featuring food writing workshops, readings, and panel discussions.
The work of linguist Dan Jurafsky has been particularly inspiring. I’ll leave you with this passage from my first reading assignment, in which he shares one of the characteristics that unites all humans – the fact that we’re all immigrants, and that no culture is an island:
