Laureate Writers Series – October 2018

Spoken Word Poet Pam Whitfield

Tuesday | October 2 | 7:00-9:30pm
Blue Heron Coffeehouse
www.blueheroncoffeehouse.com

Spoken Word poet Pam Whitfield will perform as part of the Laureate Writers Series. The program will begin at 7pm. After the reading, there will be an open mic, with the optional theme of Love. The program is free and open to the public. This event is co-sponsored by the Winona Fine Arts Commission and The Blue Heron.

Pam Whitfield is an educator, journalist, poet, activist, and horsewoman. She taught in Chinese colleges in the 1990’s, and is now at Rochester Community and Technical College. At RCTC she co-founded the state’s only two-year equine science degree program and launched the campus writing center. In 2010, she won the MnSCU Educator of the Year award, and in 2011 the Carnegie Foundation named her MN Professor of the Year. Prof. Whitfield serves on the grants review panel of the Southeast MN Arts Council, as well as the Human Trafficking Awareness Committee of Rochester, which works to educate the public on sex trafficking issues.

Pam has published poetry, creative nonfiction, feature and sports journalism, scholarly articles, and a relationship column. She won the Rochester Poetry Slam in 2012 and keynoted Mayo Clinic’s Regional Arts in Healthcare Symposium in 2014. She has since migrated into stage and performance work, including a role in The Vagina Monologues, street theatre at the MN Renaissance Festival, and enacting famous women from Mayo Clinic at historical events, most recently Sister Domitilla—in full 1941 habit! Pam performed with a music/spoken word group called Midnight Cowgirl but is now doing solo work. She says: “My style is spoken word: fast, funny, rhyming at times, and I use my southern accent shamelessly. Poetry IS performance, in my mind.”

The Laureate Writer’s Series is sponsored by the City of Winona’s Fine Arts Commission. The City of Winona is a partner of River Arts Alliance.