WORD THURSDAYS FEATURING GEORGIA POPOFF AND ANTOINETTE BRIM

GEORGIA POPOFF

Georgia A. Popoff is a writer, editor,arts-in-education specialist, and Workshops Coordinator for the YMCA of Central NY’s Downtown Writers Center, where she teaches poetry and creative nonfiction.

Her poetry includes Coaxing Nectar from Longing (Hale Mary Press, 1997), The Doom Weaver (Main Street Rag Publishers, 2008), and Psalter: The Agnostic’s Book of Common Curiosities (Tiger Bark Press, 2015). Her fourth collection of poetry, Psychometry, was released in late 2019 by Tiger Bark Press, and was a finalist for Utica College’s Eugene Nassar Poetry Prize and the CNY Book Award for Poetry. Georgia was recently named Poet Laureate of Onondaga County for a 2-year term of service. She co authored, with Quraysh Ali Lansana, Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 2011), which was a 2012 NAACP Image Award finalist. In 2017, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent (co-edited with Lansana; Haymarket Books 2017), was a finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Award in Nonfiction. 

Georgia received the National League of American Pen Women’s  2021 Vinnie Reams Award in Letters for an excerpt from her book-in-progress, Living with Haints, and has recently been appointed editor for the University of Michigan Press book series on contemporary poets, Under Discussion. For more information and for links to purchase books, visit www.georgiapopoff.com.

You can also follow her Facebook, and on Instagram and Twitter: @gappoet.

ANTOINETTE BRIM

Antoinette Brim-Bell (Antoinette Brim), Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three full-length poetry collections:  These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower.  She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alumna of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). Her poetry has appeared in various journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, including Villanelles, 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the 44th President of the United States, Not A Muse, and has appeared in Poetry Magazine and Poem-a-Day.  Additionally, Brim-Bell has published critical work, most notably, essays: Living Behind the Numbers: A Statistic Muses about her Life (National Association of African American Studies Monograph Series); The Myopic Eye in Alice Walker’s ‘Flowers’ (Critical Insights: Alice Walker, Salem Press) and Juxtaposed Dichotomies: the idealized white suburban pastoral, the surrealist tableau of black poverty & the women in between (The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, Haymarket Books).    

A printmaker and collage artist, Brim-Bell exhibited both poetry and monoprints in Jazz: An exhibition of Poetry, Prints, and Photography at the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery in New Haven, CT, and Sheroes, in partnership with the Alliance of Women Veterans at the Grove in New Haven, CT.  She serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors of Indolent Arts Foundation based in New York City, is a past Board Member of OneWorld Progressive Institute, and a past President of the Board of Directors of the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT.

Additionally, Brim-Bell hosted a series of Black History Month television programs for the OneWorld Progressive Institute.  She is also a former guest host of Patrick Oliver’s Literary Nation Talk Radio (KABF 88.3, Little Rock), for which she interviewed a variety of entertainers, literary figures, political pundits, and community developers.  A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, Brim-Bell is a Professor of English at Capital Community College in Hartford, CT.

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