Walidah Imarisha

Speaker Bio:
Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, public scholar and spoken word artist.

She has co-edited two anthologies including Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements. Imarisha's nonfiction book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption won a 2017 Oregon Book Award. She is also the author of the poetry collection Scars/Stars.

For six years, she presented statewide as a public scholar with Oregon Humanities' Conversation Project on topics such as Oregon Black history, alternatives to incarceration, and the history of hip hop. Imarisha has taught in Stanford University's Program of Writing and Rhetoric, Pacific Northwest College of the Arts' Masters in Critical Studies Program, Portland State University's Black Studies Department, and Oregon State University's Women Gender Sexuality Studies Department.

Imarisha's website is www.walidah.com

Presentation: Visioning Justice

Often times in moments of crisis, organizers and activists are told we have to think realistically and focus on smaller winnable goals. But this is exactly the time to imagine bigger, to dream unrealistically, and to fight to make that a lived reality. To do so, though, we must have imaginative spaces where we can practice together imagining different possibilities and outcomes, and where we can claim our right to the future.