03/11/2022
Immediately following the play, we will have a talkback between the audience and our distinguished panelists which include:
Donivan Brown will be our panel moderator. He has been a speaker, consultant, organizer, equity trainer, and facilitator for 25 years. He is the director of the Horton-Keller Center for Traumatic Healing in East Chattanooga. Donivan is a member of the Chattanooga Racial Equity Collective and a co-facilitator with ARCC. He’s also chair of the Ed Johnson Project, a member of the African American Cemetery Preservation Fund and a volunteer work organizer at Pleasant Garden Cemetery.
Dr. Sybil Baker is the UC Foundation Professor and Associate Department Head for Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and also teaches at the Yale Writer's Conference. She is the author of WHILE YOU WERE GONE (C&R Press, 2018), IMMIGRATION ESSAYS (C&R Press, 2017), The Life Plan, TALISMANS (C&R Press, 2010), and Into This World.
Erika Roberts is a poet who wears many hats within the community from serving as the City of Chattanooga’s creative strategist to a Fall 2021 Community Creatives Fellow with the Chattanooga Design Studio. She is also the owner and creative director of Velvet Poetry Productions but she is more than a performing poet in Chattanooga. She is a motivating creative. She has a series of workshops “Poetry is Lit” that she uses to help local poets find their voices.
KB Ballentine has a MA in Writing and Rhetoric and a MFA in Creative Writing. She has taught English, creative writing, and theatre for thirty years and has Ballentine has published sixth collections of poetry and was 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award winner.
Dr. Brian Hale is a Professor of English at Chattanooga State Community College who has an M. A. (1991) and a Ph. D. (1993) in English and American Literature from the University of South Carolina. He has studied and taught the works of Flannery O’ Connor for over thirty years as part of his American Literature courses.
