On Thursday, November 18, at 7 p.m. Jennifer Greene will read at the Bonnie HeavyRunner Gathering Place in The Payne Family Native American Center on the University of Montana campus.
The reading is sponsored by the Missoula Writing Collaborative, a nonprofit writers-in-the-schools program bringing the joy and power of creative writing to children in 14 Montana schools.
Jennifer Greene, who is Salish and Chippewa-Cree, is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. She lives on the Flathead Reservation, where she teaches for the Missoula Writing Collaborative at Two Eagle River School in Pablo.
In October 2010 Jennifer traveled to Tetova, Macedonia, where she was awarded a Poetic Creativity prize at the Ditet E Naimit International Poetry Festival. Her first collection of poetry, What I Keep, won a North American Native Authors Poetry Award in 1998. What Lasts, recently published by Foothills Publishing, is her second collection.
Writer Debra Magpie Earling (author of Perma Red) calls Jennifer Greene's What Lasts "a remarkable journey."
"Her voice lights the still room, quiet and beautiful, but she also reveals a blazing glory through a grand vision. Her voice chases darkness."
Award-winning educator Julie Cajune, who was named by Utne Reader as one of 50 visionaries who are changing the world, will introduce the reading. She has this to say about Greene's work: "Jennifer Greene's poems embrace you and pull you in to her world. The mundane and the miraculous moments of living are both experienced as sacred and magic. Through the intimate stories of being a sister, a daughter, a mother and a lover, Jennifer shows us the meaning of our daily lives."
This event marks the launch of the Missoula Writing Collaborative's annual campaign to raise funds. The reading is free. Donations to the MWC are encouraged.
MWC writers Sheryl Noethe and Mark Gibbons will join the Missoula Writing Collaborative in honoring Jennifer's work and celebrating another year of teaching kids to love to write.
