Dolores Kendrick, Washington DC
Dolores
Kendrick is a native Washingtonian. In 1999, she was appointed Poet
Laureate of the District of Columbia. Following Sterling Brown, she
is the second writer to hold this honor and position. Ms. Kendrick
is the author of four collections of poems. The most recent collection,
Why the Woman is Singing on the Corner, draws the reader deeply into
the verse narrative. Her book The Women of Plums: Poems in the
Voices of Slave Women won the Annisfield-Wolfe Award and an award
from the New York Public Library. A theatrical adaptation of the book
won the New York New Playwrights Award in 1997. Kendrick has also received
a National Endowment for the Arts Award and a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship
to Northern Ireland, as well as numerous other honors. A teacher and
a recorded poet, she is adapting The Women of Plums for production
at the National Theater and is writing a poem to be placed on a sculpture
in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington, D.C.