POET

QURAYSH ALI LANSANA

Quraysh Ali Lansana is the author of twenty books in poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and is a Lecturer in Africana Studies and English at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody Award nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award, and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine. A former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Drama Division of The Juilliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014. His most recent books include Opal’s Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams: new and collected poems, 1995-2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent) and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop. Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art, is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation.