Brenda Marie Osbey
Professional-in-residence
Education: M.A., University of Kentucky, 1986
212Q Allen Hall
E-mail: bosbey@lsu.edu
Web-site: http://osbey.com

Current Projects:

Sultane au Grand Marais: an Opéra Creole;
Narrative poems;
New Orleans essays;
Bilingual (French-English) poetry collection.

Teaching and Research Interests:

Literatures of the Americas; Narrative Poetry; Poetry in Translation; African American Poetry since WWII; the Négritude Movement; Creative Nonfiction; Cultural expressions of Black New Orleans; Afro-francophone literatures of Africa, the Caribbean and Louisiana; Afro-lusophone literatures

Publications:

Poetry collections:
All Saints: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997, 1998, 2005)
Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman (Story Line Press, 1991)
In These Houses (Wesleyan University Press, 1988)
Ceremony for Minneconjoux (Callaloo Poetry Series, 1983; University Press of Virginia, 1985).

Poems in Journals and Anthologies:

Callaloo ; Obsidian ; Essence; Renaissance Noire; Southern Review; Early Ripening: American Women's Poetry Now; The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry; 2PLUS2: A Collection of International Writing; Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology; Epoch; American Voice; The American Poetry Review; Southern Literary Journal; and Atlantic Studies .

Essays and Creative Nonfiction:

The American Voice ; Georgia Review; , BrightLeaf; Creative Nonfiction; Monde Ovale; and Southern Literary Journal.

Cultural Commentary in newspapers, popular magazines and on film:

Faubourg Tremé: the Untold Story of Black New Orleans (Serendipity Films/ Louisiana Public Broadcasting, 2007);
“Notes from France,” 12-part series on race in contemporary France, Gambit Weekly , May – October 2004.
Claiming Open Spaces (Urban Garden Films/ PBS, 1997).
"Faubourg Tremé: Community in Transition," The New Orleans Tribune, 1990–91 & 1997.

  Commentary on the Hurricanes and Floods of 2005:

National Public Radio (NPR) audio file: Louisiana's Poet Laureate: What Was Lost
The Nation Online : “ To Return and Rise Again ” September 4, 2005.

Short feature films:

Native Daughter: Brenda Marie Osbey (WYES-TV, 1999)
Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman (Urban Garden Films, in-progress).

Professional Service, Honors and Awards:

After the Storm: A national series of readings, lectures, residencies, seminars on and benefits for New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Coast: September 2005 – November 2006 , including Library of Congress, NYU, Brown University, Smith College, American Studies Annual Conference, American Library Association Conference, University of California at Berkeley. For a list of presentations with links, see After the Storm page at web-site osbey.com .

Honorary Doctor of Letters, Dickinson College , May 2006; Louisiana Writers Foundation Award for Excellence in Poetry, 2006; Poet Laureate, State of Louisiana 2005–2007; Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis France , 2004; American Book Award, 1998; Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship, 1993; New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation Maxi-Grant, 1993; National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, 1990; Kentucky Foundation for Women Fellowship 1986–1987; Bunting Fellow, the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, Harvard University, 1985–1986; Bernadine Scherman Fellowship, The MacDowell Colony, 1984; AWP Poetry Award, The Associated Writing Programs, 1984; ICA (International Communications Agency) Research Award, 1980; Academy of American Poets Loring-Williams Prize, 1980.