Co-Sponsored by the Shelterbelt Reading Series and the Department of English and Modern Languages

Brittany Marshall’s creative work is centered on themes of mental health, joy, and Blackness, specifically Black womanhood. As part of her feature in the Shelterbelt reading series Brittany Marshall will read and perform some of her renowned original poetry.

Marshall’s evocative poems reflect on legacies of trauma in homes and homelands, traumas of the black body and the religious body and the body politic.  Her “musings” offer meditations on attempting to grow out of those legacies and charter a new birthright.  Her writing is distilled and unapologetic, saturated with melanin magic, a garden of words like seeds that float your fears and your wishes in the wind, seeds that attempt to grow the world into something like a flower.

Brittany Marshall was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a high school English teacher and a queer Black woman poet.  Marshall published her first book of poetry, Musings of a Black Girl, in 2017. She is currently the Poet Laureate of Baton Rouge (2020-2021).

This event is part of the UIS Shelterbelt Reading Series, which brings writers of national reputation to UIS each semester.  To learn more about the series visit https://www.uis.edu/englishmodernlanguages/students/shelterbelt/